LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

SheliVjH.3 7 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE MASTER SOWER 



BY 



/ 

REV. F. S. DAVIS, A.M. 



The field is the world. 

—Matt, xiii, 38. 







CINCINNATI: CRANSTON & CURTS. 

NEW YORK: HUNT & EATON 

'893. 






Copyrighted by 

CRANSTON & CURTS, 

1893 



CONTENTS. 

Page. 
I. Seed Sown, .. 5 

II. The Heart Waxed Gross, 12 

III. Beauty and the Beast, 19 

IV. Fighting a Friend, 24 

V. Sinful Pleasures, 31 

VI. Compromise or Nothing, 37 

VII. The Enfeebled Conscience, 43 

VIII. Worldly-mindedness, 50 

IX. The Cant of Irreligion, 57 

X. The Method of Skulking, 65 

XI. Joy Extraordinary — Duty Ordinary, . , . . 72 

XII. Thin Soil, 82 

XIII. Temptation, 89 

XIV. Trial, 96 

XV. Praying, 104 

XVI. Growing, 113 

XVII. Cares, 122 

XVIII. Kiches, 130 

XIX. Pleasures Again, 138 

XX. Unripe Fruit, 146 

XXI. The Christ-truth Accepted with Honest Con- 
viction, 155 

XXII. The Christ-truth Accepted with Honest Ke- 

pentance, 164 

XXIII. The Christ-truth Accepted with Honest Con- 

version, 173 

XXIV. Eipe Fruit, 182 

3 



The Master Sower. 



i. 

SEED SO\^N. 

JESUS was always seeing and speaking of things 
in material nature that were significant of the 
spiritual kingdom of God. It was always a quiet 
recognition. It is one of the most natural pro- 
cesses for such a heavenly-minded being to see 
clearly what God means in all such things as the 
fields whitening for the harvest, the flowers filling 
the air with fragrance, the budding fig-tree, the 
vine with its clusters of fruit, and the sowing of 
seed. All these things the Christ wove into his 
talks about the progress of Christianity. 

The principles of the Christian religion are 
strikingly like principles of germination and growth 
in material nature. Christian truths germinate, 
grow, and multiply in a single soul, and in the souls 
of the human race en 7iiasse. 

Let us read the " Parable of the Sower" in the 
light of a multitude of events that have occurred 
in the religious history of this world since the first 
disciples listened to the Master : 

" A sower went out to sow his seed ; and as he 

5 



6 . THE MASTER SOWER. 

sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trod- 
den down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. 
And some fell upon a rock ; and as soon as it was 
sprung up it withered away, because it lacked 
moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the 
thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And other 
fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit 
an hundred-fold." 

The "seed" is the Christ-truth. The gospel of 
Christ is as seed sown that will grow in all fit 
places, and in due time — that is, Divine time. 

The seed of the plant is one of the mysteries of 
material nature. It is one of the wonderful little 
things of earth. Take iu your hand a mite of a 
seed, and think what a wonderful vitality is bound 
up in this little germ; what a multiplying force is 
imprisoned in this little cell; what juxtaposition of 
peculiar conditions does this seed require in order 
to exhibit the phenomena of growth! Many times 
longer than your hand will retain its grip on any- 
thing in this world may this seed lie unnoticed 
and unproductive, then burst into life over the 
long-forgotten graves of men who have lived and 
died. 

The seed, so easily thrown away and wasted, is 
still a significant thing in God's method of natural 
reproduction. Things that grow have their ger- 
minal vitality. This is true of plants. It is true of 
animals. It is true of religious thought. 

The Master Sower has sown broadcast the germs 



SEEDS SOWN. 7 

of the religious truth that is to flourish in the life 
of the ultimate humanity of earth. . 

It is the manifest destiny of the Christian re- 
ligion to overspread the whole earth. It oifers 
healing for the heart of the human race, hurt by 
sin. It is consistent with the purest religious in- 
stinct of mankind. It satisfies the soul with a 
clearly defined God. It distinguishes the "seen" 
and the "unseen" — the knowable and the unknow- 
able — the material and the immaterial — the holy 
and the unholy — the temporal and the eternal. 

The religious design of the Christ is broad and 
deep. We, to-day, behold this divine design in 
clearer perspective than they who looked upon a 
picture in which the solitary figure of the Sow T er 
filled the foreground. The amazing course of 
rising civilizations was invisible to the early dis- 
ciples. Deepest and strongest currents of human 
thought w T ere utterly unknown to those who first 
circled around the Sower. Restatement after re- 
statement of the doctrines of the Divine Teacher 
was to be made, until the length, breadth, depth, 
and height of the life-teaching should be manifest. 

The early disciples could not clearly foresee the 
long succession of systems of infidelity to Christ- 
truth; but the Master Sower could sow the seed of 
religious truth, and foresee its growth, despite the 
shadow of error. 

Christianity is the plant of the centuries most 
conspicuously divine of all things that are weav- 



8 THE MASTER SOWER. 

ing their growth within the growth of civilization. 
It is not denied that ugly weeds are growing in 
the midst of fairest flowers and choicest fruit of 
the grace of Christ. This needs not conceal from 
our eyes the stately growth of the fairest plant of 
earth. It should all the more excite our admira- 
tion that the Christ-plant "grows up a tender plant, 
and as a root out of a dry ground." 

There are those who persistently sneer at all 
efforts to send the gospel to heathendom while 
there are so many unconverted sinners in Christen- 
dom. Herein is misconception of the design of the 
providence of God to sow the whole earth with the 
seed of gospel truth. There is misconception of the 
double process of the progress of Christianity : To 
spread over the world to become the world's re- 
ligion; to approach the individual to characterize 
his personal religious life. 

The missionary spirit of the Church aims to ex- 
tend the territory of religious opportunity. It pro- 
poses to go into all the world, and preach the gos- 
pel to every creature. This missionary spirit is not 
to be subdued by the sneer that is born of miscon- 
ception of the essential greatness of the religion 
destined for the whole world. 

The man of mature Christian thought — in whose 
mind the Christ-truth has had a growth — is the last 
man to deny the existence of perplexing problems 
of human life on earth; but the settled conviction 



SEEDS SOWN, 9 

of his soul is that Christianity solves more of such 
problems than it creates. 

The Christ-plant in the process of unmistakable 
growth in the earth is throwing off excrescences of 
growth. Still, the evangelical Church is a mighty 
growth in the land notwithstanding the numerous 
specimens of Christians of stunted growth, whom 
the Church, like an indulgent mother, is patiently 
nursing. There is mistaken piety of the grossly 
ignorant suddenly translated from low and vulgarly 
vicious habits. There is mistaken piety of intelli- 
gent people who, while not thoroughly converted, 
feel bound to keep up a profession of piety. There 
is a so-called liberalism that strikes out of its inter- 
pretation of Christianity, vital doctrines that have 
been associated unfortunately with the abuses of 
ecclesiastical Rome, with the crudities of Protestant 
evangelism and with the abortions of evangelical 
Christian life. 

There is a Christian consciousness of the present 
age that attests the development of Christianity in 
the life of mankind. Was it not a divine conscious- 
ness that gave such a wonderful poise to the mind 
of the man Jesus? That divinely poised mind 
calmly proclaimed the final triumph of a spiritual 
kingdom by means which could have been known 
only in a higher world, where God is nearer the 
consciousness of his creatures. Jesus has but a 
slight following of short-sighted disciples. He is 



10 THE MASTER SOWER. 

bitterly assailed by the prejudices of his nation 
which have been strengthening for centuries, and 
may not yield for centuries to come. He is singu- 
larly misapprehended by the whole world. Still, he 
proclaims himself Ruler of a spiritual kingdom 
wherein love and faith are supreme principles, and 
men are put upon their honor as having to do with 
Him who is unseen. 

The religious consciousness of our race becomes 
clearer and clearer by the thinking which the spirit 
of the gospel of Christ is compelling. Both the 
friend and the foe of the Christ must think. 

There is a consciousness of Christian experience 
divested of the excessive supernaturalism that 
marked the pagan's sudden transition from his 
superstitions to his superstitious misconceptions of 
the aim of Christ. Men are stronger to-day through 
divine process of religious education. God trusts 
man even more in the appeal which Christianity 
makes to his moral wants and religious yearnings 
than when a physically miraculous interposition was 
made in the affairs of men and divinity was mani- 
fested in the visible man. 

There is evidence of Christianity in the con- 
sciousness of Christian life blending harmoniously 
with all that is worthy and pure, promising in time 
and hopeful for eternity, in the history of mankind. 

A religious movement keeping pace with the 
history of humanity of earth is viewed by the suc- 
cessive generations according to the spirit of their 



SEEDS SOWN. 11 

respective ages. The movement lags during an age 
of natural retrogression ; is accelerated during an 
age of quickened natural progress. The successive 
generations of men witness in Christianity the phe- 
nomena of religion for the world in every stage 
of its history and development, as well as religion 
for the individual at every step of his personal life. 



II. 

THE HEART ItfAXED GROSS. 

THE seed sown in various soils does not invaria- 
bly ripen into fruit of Christian character. 
There are conditions in which it does not grow at 
all. The fault of unproductiveness is not in the 
pure seed of Christ-truth, when it falls where there 
is no soil. A man's heart — out of which are the 
issues of his spiritual life — in some measure deter- 
mines his acceptance or his rejection of the Christ- 
truth, when it is fairly presented to the attention of 
his moral nature. 

The seed which Christ sows is not defective. 
The moral principles of the gospel are faultless. 
The faults which we recognize in men are not to be 
attributed to the original proclamation of the gospel 
by the Master, nor to any deficiency of the seed of 
divine truth which the Son of God is sowing in the 
hearts of men. Other sowers have mixed the seed 
of error with the pure seed sown by the Master 
Sower ; and error has its seasons of growth. 

In the Parable of the Sower, it was admitted in 
advance that a class of men on the earth would ef- 
fectually resist the gospel of Christ, in so far as 
their non-resistance to evil prevents the moral reno- 
vation which the Savior proposes for free moral 
agents. 
12 



THE HEART WAXED GROSS. 13 

Thus says Christ : " As he sowed, some fell by 
the wayside; and it was trodden down, and the fowls 
of the air devoured it." Very much of the seed of 
divine truth is sown and wasted in gross or incorri- 
gibly vicious hearts. It is not incredible in the cir- 
cumstances of the case, that, as the Savior says, " to 
those by the wayside cometh the devil, and taketh 
the word out of their hearts." 

The Savior thus describes the devil's opportunity : 
" This people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears 
are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed, 
lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and 
hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, 
and should be converted, and I should heal them." 
The hearts that have waxed gross open the wayside 
for Satanic influence, and viciously invite "evil 
ones" to help them against Christ. 

The saying of Christ, " Then cometh the devil, 
and taketh the word out of their hearts," suggests a 
theory of evil simultaneously with the heavenly 
proclamation of salvation for man. Jesus Christ 
comes to earth with glad tidings of heavenly good 
for mankind. The heavenly truth meets the oppo- 
sition both of earthly and of super-earthly evil. The 
Son of God inaugurates a spiritual kingdom. The 
records of the inaugural processes of this kingdom 
of Christ indicate commotion of an opposing dia- 
bolical kingdom. The reign of diabolism is op- 
posed to the Son of God entering upon his kingdom. 

There are "evil ones," decidedly averse to the 



14 THE MASTER SOWER. 

salvation of men. There is a kingdom of darkness, 
with a measure of power for evil. This much ap- 
pears on the surface of the gospel records. Will it 
all disappear, as our eyes get accustomed to the 
Christ-light? Let us see. 

Jesus believed in the existence of devils. The 
belief of Jesus is the knowledge of Jesus. He spoke 
of demoniacal possession of the spirits and bodies of 
men as matter of fact. His exorcism of evil spirits 
was not a solemn farce. He was not playing with 
the superstitions of men, and giving to this phase of 
his divine work a misnomer. 

The dawn of the glorious Sun of righteousness 
on earth gave this lower world a glimpse of angels 
of heaven, singing triumphantly, " Glory to God in 
the highest." The advent of Christ's kingdom on 
earth gave a glimpse of Satan's kingdom of evil. 
For a short time the exultation of angels on high 
and the consternation of devils below were alike 
visible. The extremes of good and evil in the uni- 
verse, for a moment — an era in the moral history of 
the universe — viewed each other with pity and ha- 
tred. A new world — the earth — had reached the 
crisis of its moral history. 

The land chosen of God for the manifestation of 
the Son of God is the land chosen by Satan as the 
proper theater for demon manifestation. The na- 
tion chosen of God for the transmission of the body 
of his truth is the nation chosen by the adversary 
in which to organize the forces of evil. The Son of 



THE HEART WAXED GROSS. 15 

God makes the fiercest hostility of demons against 
the truth the peculiar signal of their existence. 

It is a fact that sin has repeatedly made devils 
of men on earth. Devils incarnate have hated 
moral goodness with all the malignity that may be 
attributed to fiends of hell. They have opposed 
with evil arts the purest principles of religion. 
They have applauded the basest and most destruc- 
tive passions of the human soul at the point of the 
soul's most humiliating moral degradation. At the 
instigation of these human devils, vice and cruelty 
have tortured humanity. Belief in the existence of 
devils within the sphere of human life and beyond, 
is forced upon the soul that has made a desperate 
struggle for true life. 

The animus of the effectual resistance of men 
against Christianity ceases to be a secret when laid 
bare by the Revealer in words which expose the 
resister's success as his shame : " His heart has 
waxed gross." 

It is no triumph for men that animalism has 
rendered the human soul so gross that no fine 
image of Christ is impressed therein. It is a 
shame to have no sensitiveness of spirit for moral 
purity. It is a natural degradation for a human 
creature to quench spiritual aspirations and to per- 
mit deterioration of the texture of his soul by 
gross indulgence of his appetites. 

The Divine Author of the Scriptures might 
have given still plainer evidence of their divine 



16 THE MASTER SOWER. 

authority. As men's ears became dull of hearing, 
and their eyes closed, the voice of Jehovah might 
have sounded louder, and divine appearances might 
have been more vivid. Those whose hearts had 
waxed gross might have been frightened into some 
ceremonial observance of religion or some spiritless 
form of godliness; but with all this, we have no 
reason to suppose any less resistance of the sensual 
mind to the moral purity of Christ. 

Jesus might have conciliated vast numbers of 
the Jews of his time by laying before their eyes 
the foundation of a mighty carnal or political king- 
dom. These people could come eagerly to the bap- 
tism of John. They had no insurmountable objec- 
tion to a ceremonial repentance. They failed to 
comprehend a spiritual kingdom of the Divine 
Redeemer. They did not wish to have their hearts 
changed. These descendants of Abraham were en- 
raged on hearing Jesus rebuke their unholy lives, 
and their dependence for divine favor on the bare 
fact of their being the children of Abraham. For 
this reason there was to their minds a biting irony 
in the words of Jesus : " Ye must be born again." 

These degenerate Jews are distinctly told that 
they have no place in the kingdom of the Son of 
God, the Messiah, except they be born, not of water 
alone — not baptismal regeneration — but also of 
the Holy Spirit. Nothing but a genuine repent- 
ance and a washing of spiritual regeneration would 
suffice. Their Pharisaic nonentities of religion 



THE HEART WAXED GROSS. 17 

could not be the basis of Christ's kingdom. The 
mission of the Redeemer's kingdom was of grander 
scope than Pharaisaic eye could scan. The greater 
number of this people, whose hearts had waxed 
gross, scornfully repudiated the idea of conversion 
from Jewish prejudices to a Christlike spirit. 

In the corrupt hearts of the generation of Jews 
who opposed Christ, devils had a striking opportu- 
nity for snatching away the seed of divine truth. 
There was the infernal advantage of these gross 
hearts' deep-rooted aversion to the moral quality of 
the fundamental principles of the New Testament. 
A natural cause of their rejecting Christ is trace- 
able to their long-cherished prejudices against 
anything like the spirit of the new covenant. In 
their hearts that had waxed gross was the moral 
reason for their being rejected of Christ. They 
would not repent nor believe with their hearts unto 
righteousness. 

The Scriptures teach that there is a dark, per- 
sonal background of evil — a term in the series of 
phenomena of evil back of earth and humanity — 
which explains something of the evil of humanity, 
and explains the easier terms of salvation offered to 
men ; easier than any of which we have any hint in 
the Scriptures as offered to superior intelligences 
who have sinned nearer the throne, in the midst of 
brighter manifestations of the divine government, 
and in the heavenly light without external solicita- 
tion to sin against God. 

2 



18 THE MASTER SOWER. 

Why is it that highly cultivated minds reluc- 
tantly accept the theory that evil spirits have access 
to the minds of men on the earth? Is it not that 
Christian culture contracts the area of diabolical 
manifestation? Just as culture, with Christian vir- 
tue, tends to destroy such fields of demon manifes- 
tation as that in Judea in the time of Christ, so — 
without suspicion of casting dishonor on the ve- 
racity of the Gospel record — it gives less and less 
attention to the subject of " demoniacal possession," 
choosing rather, with the diction of culture, to 
speak of evil as it is manifested in the lives of 
wicked men whose hearts have evidently and re- 
sponsibly u waxed gross." 

The darkness of sin is not yet dissipated from 
the earth. The turbulence of rebellion against the 
government of God has not ceased. There is still 
gross wickedness, unaccountable if attributed to hu- 
manity alone. A multitude of human hearts that 
have waxed gross and greedily consent unto sin, 
consent as unto devils. 

The human heart's resistance against the Son of 
God is a matter of practical observation, whatever 
forces of evil may accompany or are antecedent to 
this resistance. A clear consciousness of evil is a 
demonstration just as plain as a visible devil. If 
men will sincerely and valiantly give battle to all 
evil, it is a matter of comparatively little impor- 
tance how much credit or discredit Satan may have. 



III. 

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. 

A MULTITUDE of men throughout Christen- 
dom utterly fail to recognize the divine beauty 
of Christian character. This is not to be viewed as 
a failure of Christ, as if there were no beauty of the 
Son of God that he should be admired of men. 
Why, then, is the glorious beauty of the Christ- 
character thus unrecognized and rejected? 

There are those who do not lift the eyes of the 
soul above the horizon of Judea. They see Christ 
only in the dim religious sense exercised by a pagan 
just converted from the grossest of his superstitions. 
The Christ is viewed by thousands as a fossilized 
specimen of being, half-human, half-divine, or as a 
divine automaton moving in a distant age — a panto- 
mimic rebuke of the present age, with its inability 
exactly to reproduce the surroundings of the cross 
on Calvary. Such minds imagine that they have 
attained to all the significance of the Christ-charac- 
ter, while such attainment is a divorce of their lives 
from the harmless spirit of their age, resulting in 
ugly distortions instead of the clear spiritual beauty 
of real Christian character. 

Criticism in religion has some points of resem- 
blance with criticism in art and literature. A man's 

19 



20 THE MASTER SOWER. 

unfavorable judgment concerning the beauty of the 
Christ-character is not to be accepted independently 
of his moral taste. The moral taste may have been 
grossly neglected and vitiated. The Divine Spirit 
may have been carelessly slighted. The man who 
has persisted in disobeying his moral convictions and 
spiritual instincts has done violence to his moral and 
spiritual nature. His inattention to these convic- 
tions and instincts leads, at last, to lack of moral 
perception; and the very light of God's counte- 
nance, shining with promise of blessing to the soul, 
is rejected as offensive. 

There is a process of vitiating the moral taste 
through infidelity to the ordinary principles of nat- 
ural religion. The vitiated moral taste turns away 
from Christianity, not so much on account of lack of 
divine authority of the gospel — the question of au- 
thority may not have been examined at all — as on 
account of the souPs distaste of moral purity. 

The principles of Christianity are to give charac- 
ter to men, along with the impressions made by the 
natural environment of human life on earth. There 
is nothing in the Scriptures to indicate that the in- 
dividuality of every human being may not be as dis- 
tinct as the individuality of Jesus. 

If Jesus Christ, clothed with flesh and blood, 
were present to the vicious man of this generation, 
he would still make a disagreeable impression in this 
mind, and men might still be found with disposition 
to " crucify the Son of God afresh." So the Christ 



BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. 21 

stood before the carnal Jews of old, who despised 
and rejected the divine beauty and purity of his 
character. 

The incarnation of divinity in the person of 
Jesus Christ needs not be repeated in every genera- 
tion of men on earth. One such incarnation serves 
the complete religious purpose of God. This Christ 
is to be enshrined in the hearts of believing men. 
This crucified One ever liveth to make intercession 
for mankind. The one incarnation conformed to the 
religious condition and natural surroundings of the 
Hebrew people eighteen centuries ago. No confor- 
mity with the natural condition of the people of any 
land or any age will render Jesus Christ any more 
agreeable to the vicious heart so long as the vicious 
heart uuyieldingly confronts the divinely holy life 
of Jesus. It is not a sufficient justification for one 
to declare that the holy principles of Christianity are 
unlovely and unattractive. Let one consult his per- 
verted moral taste for the peculiar reason of his 
aversion to the beauty of holiness. 

When Christ comes, responsive to the moral 
need of humanity, he often wooes in vain the free 
heart that viciously rejects spiritual beauty. In 
vain Christ attests his heavenly mission by heavenly 
works in the presence of the malicious spirit that 
persists in saying, "He hath a devil." 

It is an ugly feature of moral depravity that 
man has often converted into a symbol of cruelty 
the very cross on which Heaven's holy sacrifice was 



22 THE MASTER SOWER. 

made. The teaching of Jesus — beautiful in holi- 
ness — has been perverted by vile men to serve the 
purpose of beastliness. 

During several centuries of the history of the 
Church the greater part of the records of genuine 
Christian life was lost in the cloud of absorbing 
superstitions; thrown into the shadow of contro- 
versies about the non-essentials of religion; sup- 
pressed by the fury of persecution, — so that many 
Christians, in devout sympathy with the mind of 
Christ a thousand years ago, we may easily con- 
ceive, quietly and beautifully ripened for heaven 
while making no conspicuous figure in the history 
of their times. The pens of only a few divinely 
inspired men have preserved for us the record of 
the divine beauty of Christ. Many writers, busy 
with the history of useless wars, abominable super- 
stitions, and degrading idolatries, left to Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, and John the sweet story of Jesus. 
Witness crafty Josephus, studious historian of the 
Jews, devoting but a brief paragraph to Christ — if 
indeed he penned that — at the very time that Christ 
was stirring the whole Jewish world, and while his 
Messianic demonstrations were fresh in the memory 
of living men ! 

Just as in the past, so in the present, there is a 
modesty of the Christian character which veils its 
beauty from the gaze of the vulgarly vicious. The 
least beautiful profession of Christian love is often 
most immodestly conspicuous. It is restrained by 



BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. 23 

no shyness of spiritual modesty. The sweetest voice 
of piety is too gentle, too refined, with too much 
of the music of heaven in it, for ears dulled to the 
" still small voice of God," or for souls that will not 
hear what the Divine Spirit saith. 

We are sorry for one who sees no beauty what- 
ever in the loveliest Christian character, while he 
looks for beauty in every direction except in a 
Christian life responsibly his own; while he fails 
to conceive of himself putting on beautiful gar- 
ments of righteousness; while he does not yearn 
for something in the realm of spiritual possibili- 
ties inexpressibly more beautiful than a sinful life. 

The crying want of the soul, blinded by per- 
sistent habits of vice, is conscious fitness for the 
heaven of Christ. This is a consciousness of char- 
acter joined with the grace of Christ; this is char- 
acter which looks with chaste hope toward the 
heaven which Christ proposes as the ultimate home 
of the redeemed soul ; this is heaven, radiant with 
the glorious beauty of Christian holiness; this is a 
glorious spiritual beauty, seen by the eye of faith 
in the Son of God, who walked the earth in the 
beauty of heavenly sinlessness. 



IV. 

FIGHTING A FRIEND. 

THERE is a zeal for God, in the name of 
Christianity, that too frequently breathes the 
spirit of misanthropy. This zeal too often regards 
the " unregenerate " as possessing no natural vir- 
tues whatever. It is an unfortunate mistake of 
piety when such virtues are not recognized in the 
natural man. Christian piety can afford to recog- 
nize in these natural virtues some trace of the in- 
fluence of Christ. They may be regarded as open 
doors of the heart, for Christ to enter and take pos- 
session of the entire man. 

The keen perception of the unregenerate man 
sometimes discovers that the narrowly regenerate 
hate the sinner rather than the sins. It is unfor- 
tunate that the sinner does not always detect the 
misanthrope in the guise of religion. It is sad 
that the sinner is so slow in recognizing, at the door 
ajar, the Divine Friend of sinners. 

We hopefully look in the future for a better and 
better physical basis of spiritual or Christian life. 
We look for less bitter fancies of Christ, as in hos- 
tile opposition to the instincts of manhood. We 
expect science — especially social science — to become 
more and more the faithful ally of healthy Chris- 
24 



FIGHTING A FRIEND. 25 

tianity. We expect the energy of the Spirit of 
Christ to flow harmoniously with the full free cur- 
rent of natural vitality in healthy Christians. We 
do not expect that the idiosyncrasies of distorted 
nervous systems will always be regarded, by any 
great number of people, as the fittest representation 
of the choicest piety. 

Many a sick man sees clearly what his weary 
hands and feet and brain can not perform. He 
may be able to exhibit only the passive virtues of 
the Christian profession ; but, in so doing, he com- 
pletely triumphs over the morbid conditions to 
which many other men surrender. Still, we may say 
that there is in the world not a little of unhealthy 
Christianity. This unhealthy Christianity confronts 
while it does not relieve — but rather aggravates — 
the moral insanity of the vicious who persist in 
looking upon Christ as an aggressive enemy rather 
than a friend. 

The man who all his life spurns the gospel as a 
rule of conduct of life has no just conception of 
Jesus as his best, Divine Friend. He sees no friend- 
liness in strictures on the bad course of his life. 
He suspiciously regards the declaration that he 
shall stand before the judgment-seat of Christ as a 
vengeful threat of severe morality. He burns with 
indignation that a rule of holy conduct should be 
imposed on him. A conviction of vice takes pos- 
session of his mind that Christ is an oppressive 
Master, He does not cherish the pleasing idea of 



26 THE MASTER SOWER. 

salvation from sin. He nurses angry thoughts of 
the prohibition of vice; and these thoughts trouble 
his mind. He has no delightful anticipation of 
heaven ; he has, instead, dark foreboding of unrest 
of soul. He will not realize that the powers of 
evil are leagued against him. He imagines that 
powers of heaven, led on by Christ, are leagued 
against him. Instead of condemning himself, for 
his. own sin, he condemns his offered Savior, and 
sullenly bows his head to the fatality of sin, when 
he might hopefully lift his eyes toward glorious 
Christian destiny. 

There is a fault in the Church which is repeat- 
edly uncovered by revivals, but which is yet far 
from being corrected by the superficial, transient, 
vaporous religious sensations that characterize too 
many revivals. The fault is fortified in habits 
of thought that hold on to the extravagances of 
weak minds in the heat of sensational revival as of 
the very essence of religion. To obviate the fault 
involves one of the most perplexing problems that 
engage the attention of the evangelical Churches. 
The problem is : How shall we rise to a higher 
plane of Christian thought — retain pure and simple 
spiritual power — make smaller the mass of those 
who effectually resist the gospel of Christ, all at 
the same time ? The solution of the problem has 
much to do with the class of people who get wrong 
ideas of the gospePs opposition to their lives 
through observing the incongruity between the 



FIGHTING A FRIEND. 27 

ordinary life of the Church and the extravagantly 
sensational life of the Church. 

Genuine Christianity is the very embodiment of 
God's rich love toward the very men who fight the 
Savior as their enemy. There is nothing disagree- 
able in a souPs clear conception of the love of God 
as manifested through Christ. There is a character 
of Christian piety that gladly recognizes a sweet 
undertone of the voice of God's love in the very 
thunders of Sinai. There is a touching voice of 
divine love in the bitter cry of the self-sacrificing 
Son of God on Calvary. There is a moral grandeur 
in the freedom of a human soul, and there is a 
splendid pity and a tone of heavenly love in the 
invitation of Jesus calling that free, but sinful and 
wandering soul back to God. 

Human life is not worth living on earth if 
there is no law emanating from the All-wise, point- 
ing rational creatures to higher possibilities of life in 
the direction which immortal powers may safely take. 
Is there not some law of highest communion with 
God? Is there not some law that marks the way 
to the highest heavenly life ? 

The law side of our idea of God does not neces- 
sarily interfere with the love side. Law directs; 
love blesses. Sinai is wreathed with fire ; Calvary 
is stained with blood. Sinai calls attention to di- 
vine authority ; Calvary calls attention to divine 
compassion, and holy, divine love. The law is 
necessary ; the active love that the Spirit of Christ 



28 THE MASTER SOWER. 

inspires is the fulfilling of the law. Lovelessness 
is lawlessness ; it fights, it spurns Christ, who is 
the embodiment of divine love. 

A multitude of people on the earth persist in 
regarding Christianity as an oppressive system of re- 
ligion, opposed to all the sweetest instincts of their 
natural lives. They do not pause to consider that 
a redeemed soul's love of God in Christ is most 
wonderful emancipation from oppressive bondage 
to sin. They make no virile effort to gain genuine 
spiritual liberty. They do not cherish a pleasing 
thought that the religion of Jesus is divinely de- 
signed to set them free. How free indeed is he 
who is bound only with silken cords of love ! 

Jesus, the Son of God, is a strikingly natural 
expression of God's love toward mankind. He 
walks, talks, and dines with men. He talks sweetly 
and gently of the Father's house on high. He 
does not interfere in the least with the legitimate, 
harmless daily business of men. He illustrates and 
sanctifies the common friendship of men. 

Jesus had indeed a special and exalted mission 
on earth which no ordinary human being could 
perform. He is King of kings, and Lord of lords; 
but that is not permitted to obscure his sympathies 
w T ith ordinary human life. He notices the beautiful 
flowers in his path. He loves little children; he 
takes them in his arms and blesses them. He is 
moved with compassion at the sight of a multitude 
faint and hungry. He is filled with a most natural 



FIGHTING A FRIEND. 29 

but righteous indignation at the hypocrisy of the 
Pharisees. His presence at a wedding sanctifies the 
family, and implies a benediction on the brightest 
temporal hopes of youth. 

The life of Christ with men is a divinely hu- 
man expression of God's sympathy with humanity. 
It is to familiarize our souls with the idea of God, 
and to encourage our approach to him as the Divine 
Friend of mankind. 

It is most strikingly emphasized in the gospel 
that Jesus Christ is the Friend of sinners. He is 
"a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother." 
They who resist Christ as they resist a foe, have a 
misconception of the friendship of God in Christ. 
It may have appeared to their minds only as a fig- 
ure of speech. It may have been associated with 
the cant of men who have never made an idea of 
religion clearly intelligible nor agreeable to their 
" fellow-sinners." The divine friendliness that 
breathes in freshness and purity in the New Testa- 
ment has a right to manly recognition. 

Think of Jesus as locking arms with one, walk- 
ing with him along some pleasant, familiar path, as 
he walked with the early disciples, in the midst of 
precious home-scenes, talking with familiar, friendly 
tone on such a theme as this : " Blessed are they 
which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for 
they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, 
for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure 
in heart, for they shall see God!" Such is the 



30 THE MASTER SOWER. 

gentle friendliness of Him who teaches with divine 
authority. Happy the man who cherishes sympa- 
thies with this Son of God; who casts aside the 
weapons of his carnal fight; who takes the prof- 
fered friendly, Divine Hand, and realizes an inspi- 
ration of life which makes him, a sinful creature, 
more godlike, while, at the same time, not less 
manly ! 



SINFUL PLEASURES. 

THE pleasures of human life on earth, in rela- 
tion to the life-claims of the Christian relig- 
ion, present the following three peculiarly noticeable 
phases : 

1. Innocent pleasures. God is good to give us 
life which spontaneously yields sweet, pure enjoy- 
ment. There are pleasures of human life which 
the most scrupulous conscience can not look upon 
as transgressions of moral law. They are not 
dragged into theological discussions; they can not 
soil the soul. They whisper sometimes to the soul 
of the worst man that lives, like zephyrs from 
Eclen. They force no blush to the cheek of inno- 
cence; they send no tingling pain along the nerves; 
they make no sighs nor tears. 

The class of persons who resist the religion of 
Christ have no complaint against the Divine Law T - 
giver with reference to any experiences of these 
innocent pleasures. Their resistance to the Christ 
is not so innocent. 

2. Questionable pleasures. Christ gives his fol- 
lowers occasion to think in the midst of enjoyment 
of life. There are honest differences of opinion 
among real Christians concerning amusements. 

31 



32 THE MASTER SOWER. 

One Christian's innocent tastes may be utterly un- 
like the innocent tastes of another equally consci- 
entious Christian. There may be various shades of 
opinion concerning the moral quality of amusement 
as amusement. Various associated ideas will influ- 
ence our opinions, more or less, concerning this or 
that mode of pleasure. Some will be calmly 
thoughtful over questions of lawful pleasure; some 
will fret ; some will mourn ; some will be censori- 
ous; some will be charitable; some will be neutral. 

It is not this phase of questionable amusements 
that troubles the class of people who resist the re- 
ligion of Christ. In their case there is no such 
painstaking of conscience. They are not anxiously 
debating on the debatable ground of worldly amuse- 
ments ; they are fighting the divine authority which 
invades the territory of pleasures unquestionably 
hostile to the divine government, and inimical to 
the peaceful interests of mankind. 

3. Positively evil pleasures. There are evils which 
yield pleasurable sensations, and are at the same 
time hurtful to mankind, and always contrary to 
the law of God. Pleasurable sensations without a 
firm basis of moral principle are deceptive. The 
nerves may be made to lie to the soul. A class of 
people find enjoyment in excesses of what they are 
pleased to call " liberty " — it is, in plain truth, 
licentiousness. The senses are intoxicated with that 
which defiles the soul, and life is an effervescence of 
low animal spirits. 



SINFUL PLEASURES. 33 

A nation whose pleasures are vitiating the blood, 
and whose children grow only to become frivolous 
men and women, can not hope to live forever 
among the nations of the earth. If such a nation 
shall not have a regeneration, it must die. This 
whole world of mankind can not forever survive a 
general abandon to pleasure, reckless of all law of 
God. Universal vice in the course of a few gener- 
ations would sweep the race of men from the face 
of the earth as by the waters of a deluge. 

The pain and grief of the Holy Son of God on 
Calvary are a terrible rebuke to the reckless pleas- 
ures of sin. The world needs this spectacle of 
submissive, sacrificial suffering on the cross. It is 
suffering vindicating divine law. It is Heaven's 
awful rebuke to earthly pleasure defying divine 
law. We can not fathom all the mystery of that 
suffering on the Calvary cross ; we do not under- 
stand all the rationale of its virtue. Doubtless 
that tragedy on the cross was designed for other 
than human eyes; for higher and deeper and 
broader than human thought in its present state; 
for history reaching farther than human history in 
time; for emotions deeper than can be stirred in 
the heart of humanity while dwelling on earth. 

The death of the Son of God as viewed by 
wondering angels must have been in vivid contrast 
w T ith human life on earth. The emotions of the 
soul of Him w T ho was wounded for man's transgres- 
sions must have been in startling contrast w T ith the 

3 



34 THE MASTER SOWER. 

false pleasure that attends, for a season, man's 
transgression of divine law. We sometimes con- 
trast the sufferings of vice with the pleasures of 
virtue. Here on the Calvary cross is one of 
Heaven's amazing disclosures: for some divine pur- 
pose, which sinful men. are invited to investigate, 
virtue suffers while men pursue pleasure in the 
path of vice ! 

Sinai and Calvary respectively blaze and bleed 
in the path of pleasure-seeking men, reckless alike 
of divine law and divine grace. Sinai voices the 
divine law that forbids sinful pleasures ; the trag- 
edy on Calvary, the suffering of Divine Love, re- 
bukes the pleasures that defy divine law. 

The principles of morality authorized by Christ 
rebuke the fictitious contentment of the lovers of 
sinful pleasures. They would, if they could, thus 
ignobly love and live forever on the lowlands of 
life. They are in condition to starve on angels' 
food. They foolishly ask only to be let alone. 
The crucified Christ disturbs their peace. They 
are disturbed through death impending. They are 
made uneasy through unbidden convictions at their 
sensual feasts. But apart from the disturbing in- 
fluences of the persistent presence of the Christian 
religion on earth, there is a contentment which 
vicious pleasure gives the soul it dwarfs. 

The Lord Christ vainly knocks at the closed door 
of many a preoccupied heart. Sad indeed that in the 



SINFUL PLEASURES. 35 

uame of pleasure, there should be written over that 
door: "Admittance here to everything pleasant, 
with the single exception of whatever is divine!" 

In the view of a man whose life is contracted 
by the transient pleasures of sin, whose moral taste 
is vitiated, whose will-force is impaired by enervat- 
ing vice, earth appears more immediately available 
than heaven. God's plan appears less practicable 
than man's plan for pleasure. The man seizes his 
first — that is, his temporal — opportunity for pleas- 
ure, regardless of any divine purpose concerning 
his eternal life. Every plan of reckless pleasure 
is naturally a godless plan. God can not be re- 
tained in plans of pleasure which ignore the im- 
mortality and moral capacity of the human soul. 

The Lord Jesus Christ places heaven — and eter- 
nal life in heaven — in the foreground of the picture 
of pure happiness for man. This is exactly the re- 
verse of what many men imagine concerning happi- 
ness. The perspective of the irreligious man's picture 
of happiness is wrong. There is the taint of sin in 
his imagination ; there is too little religious color; 
there is too slight appreciation of distances in his 
view. He fails to place first in his view the king- 
dom of God. Scenes of unrighteousness arise and 
obstruct the beatific vision which the Word of God 
would open for the eye of the soul. Men are con- 
demned for their refusal to turn away from their 
filthy imagery of what is most desirable in the tern- 



36 THE MASTER SOWER. 

poral life,, while closing their eyes against the 
heavenly view that extends into the ages of God 
beyond the limits of time. 

There is an instinct of the human soul, surviving 
its absorption in sinful pleasures, which at times viv- 
idly apprehends the perspective of Christ's deline- 
ation of happiness for man. It is, at the same time, 
an instinct of resistance to the glad tidings from 
afar, concerning life infinitely better than the life of 
the soul that seeks brief pleasure in sin ; but this re- 
sistance is peculiarily significant. 

There is a divine philosophy of happiness. 
Christ's glad tidings from heaven is a revelation of 
eternal truth. Eternal life necessarily stands in the 
foreground of the divine message of Christ. The 
Christ-truth is eternal; it necessarily contradicts the 
imperfections of humanity in time. The fact that a 
human soul sins with emotions or sensations of 
pleasure in sin, does not change the truth that pro- 
ceeds of necessity from God. The heavenly hope of 
those who give to the Lord Christ the obedience of 
faith, ought not to perish in order to give the ap- 
pearance of coherency to the delirium of manifestly 
sinful pleasure. 



VI. 

COMPROMISE OR NOTHING. 

WHENEVER the gospel prescribes good char- 
acter, an issue is made with bad character. 
At such issue the gospel can make no compromise. 
The gospel can not consistently compromise its own 
character of holiness. It can not void its own di- 
vine purpose of holiness. The standard of the gos- 
pel can not be lowered to satisfy the human spirit 
that is utterly careless of religion. God conde- 
scends, it is true, to the moral need of the fallen 
human spirit; but it is that the human spirit, soiled 
by sin, may find satisfaction in being lifted up — noj; 
in lowering the gospel standard. " Blessed are they 
which do hunger and thirst after righteousness ; for 
they shall be satisfied." 

Strike out of the minds of all who reject the 
principles of Christian holiness, all belief in future 
punishment of sin; and we do not conceive of these 
persons on that account any more enthusiastically 
accepting the right spirit of the gospel in the for- 
mation of good character. We see that men persist 
in sinfulness, and remain unchristian in spite of 
either fear or honor. 

The gospel of Christ must be uncompromising 
in the measure of its requirement concerning spirit- 

37 



38 THE MASTER SOWER. 

ual life, or it can not be regarded as divine. It can 
not consistently require of the life that has gone 
radically wrong, less than that which is suggested 
by the confession and supplication of the penitent 
king of Israel: "I acknowledge my transgressions; 
create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a 
right spirit within me !" That is not a supplica- 
tion for compromise on the part of the penitent. It 
is the expression of spiritual yearning, and of hum- 
ble surrender to the grace of God. 

If the spirit of holiness unto the Lord could be 
adjusted to coincide with the animus of worldly 
evil, a divine revelation demanding a few mechan- 
ical ceremonies to be observed as nominal service to 
the Lord would be accepted by many as a promise 
of the next best thing after the essentially irre- 
ligious enjoyment of this earthly life. Even in the 
Churches there are some who, during the week, ab- 
sorbed in secular business, fail to exhibit the heav- 
enly spirit of their religion, but on the Sabbath 
pay their nominal tribute of service to the Lord, go 
through their drill as Sunday soldiers of the cross, 
and nod their sleepy approbation of sound doctrine. 
These seek to compromise the religion which others 
directly resist. 

Let us look a little into the oft-repeated and 
much-abused phrase, " serving the Lord." "Di- 
vine services" in the sanctuary are the ritual of the 
redeemed spirit. " Servant of God" is a figure of 
speech indicative of a devout spirit of obedience to 



COMPROMISE OR NOTHING. 39 

God's law; hence, in this view, he who serves the 
divine cause and purpose of righteousness on earth 
is a servant of God. To serve God with forms only, 
while serving the adversary of God with the spirit, 
is an insult to the inspiring Spirit of the Bible. 

A mind not in sympathy with the essentially 
holy purpose of Christianity may recognize the un- 
compromising spirit and purpose of the religion in 
the direction of moral regeneration and holiness, 
and at the same time deliberately and strenuously 
resist; but such resistance, with such recognition, is 
too gross to be regarded as commendable natural 
honesty. 

Condense the volumes that theologians have 
written ; throw out the controversy that has grown 
from little germs of difference in men's habits of 
religious thinking ; detect a common hunger of 
soul within the circle of conflict of opinions. In 
all this get at the kernel of conditions of salvation 
that God proposes — conditions answering to the di- 
vine insight into the moral want of a free sinful 
soul. 

Listen to the Savior saying, without definitions 
to confuse the soul at the crisis of its life, " Re- 
pent." Behold the Son of God, who lived to teach 
and died to redeem man, offered as the divine ob- 
ject of saving faith. " Repentance toward God and 
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ/' is the condensed 
expression of the conditions of entrance into the 
spiritual kingdom of God, which reaches from 



40 THE MASTER SOWER. 

earth where sinful souls are redeemed, into the 
heavens where redeemed souls are glorified. 

Millions are hovering on the outside of the 
spiritual area of this glorious kingdom of God. 
They are starving for the righteousness of God. 

Thev shrink from the faintest shadow of conditions 

«/ 

of entrance into God's kingdom of grace. They 
imagine that there is something more hopeful in 
drifting on the wide sea of unbelief than in com- 
mitting their souls to the current of divinely 
gracious conditions of salvation that flows definitely 
heavenward. 

There is a divine kingdom of righteousness 
very near humanity on earth, if the heart of hu- 
manity would recognize the divine presence. It is 
the kingdom of the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, 
heralded by the prophet John, as a at hand." The 
voice of the Redeemer takes up and prolongs the 
voice of the herald ; but it is not a voice compro- 
mising the righteous conditions of entrance into the 
kingdom. Christ, the King in his kingdom, says, 
" Repent." The scepter in his royal hand is a 
scepter of righteousness. The heart that truly 
bows to this token of divine royalty makes a re- 
pentant pledge of loyalty to righteousness — not a 
compromise by which he may stand outside of the 
sway of the kingly Savior, and yet reap the benefit 
of a scheme of salvation. If thousands will stand 
outside, then they must. 

A genuine Christian life corresponds, in some 



COMPROMISE OR NOTHING. 41 

appreciable degree, with a souPs insight into the 
moral significance of the life and death of Christ. 
A sublime faith in the Divine Savior does not arise 
from a shallow repentance. Faith that deserves 
the name springs from repentance that deserves the 
name. A steadfast Christian life can not be the 
legitimate result of an unsteady purpose. There 
can be no hearty espousal of the Christian cause of 
holiness without a sincere renunciation of sin. 

" Without faith it is impossible to please God/' 
The very moment a truly repentant soul seizes this 
principle of pleasing relation with God in Christ, 
he has thoughts of mercy and pardon. Christ in 
that moment is impressed in the soul. A process 
of unfolding of one's spiritual nature begins. The 
sunshine of heaven acts upon the faith-germ ; it 
blooms ; it bears fruit. Now, a multitude of people 
recognize clearly enough this faith as the basis of a 
Christian life which they w T ill by no means endure. 
The Christian character — by whatever process at- 
tained — is spurned. This fact, manifest in a multi- 
tude of lives, instead of reproaching, vindicates the 
gospel of Christ. 

There is that in the real reformation of an un- 
christian life which evinces the uncompromising 
spirit of the gospel, that is at the same time the 
peculiar glory of the Christian religion. There are 
those whose ideas of respectability are incompatible 
with the humiliation implied in genuine repent- 
ance ; and their ideas of the possibilities of divine 



42 THE MASTER SOWER. 

grace in the soul contradict the spiritual exaltation 
implied in faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. If 
they could substitute something of the spirit of the 
unbelieving world for the spirit of moral renovation 
or regeneration that breathes in the gospel, they 
might accept the form of the religion of Christ. 
They might be persuaded to join the visible Church 
while refusing to pass the threshold of the spiritual 
temple, saying in effect : " Beyond this line of com- 
promise we yield nothing to the claim of Christ 
upon our lives. " 



VII. 

THE ENFEEBLED CONSCIENCE, 

THERE are those in whose souls a process of 
enfeebling conscience has gone farther in the 
fact of their rejecting Christ than any morally care-i 
ful and reasonable examination that they have ever 
made of Christ's claim of divine authority. 

Comparatively few of the mass of people who 
are pleased to call themselves skeptics are making 
any thorough investigation, " scientific " or other- 
wise, of the evidences of the Christian religion. If 
the conscience of such were revivified, they would 
require no clearer evidence of the divine origin of 
the Christian religion than that already within their 
reach, in order to accept religion. 

It is not the imperturbability of a solidly based 
skepticism that explains the dead calm in many 
minds in the congregation under the appeals of the 
evangelical preacher. It is rather the stagnation of 
the moral sense. This is the ordinary skepticism 
which begins with the declension of the regard due 
the moral sense — the conscience — in its testimony as 
to the common moral law, and advances to its posi- 
tion of vicious disregard of Christianity with the 
semblance of strong reason for unbelief. 

When, through a process of enfeebling con- 
43 



44 THE MASTER SOWER. 

science, one is emboldened to reject the Christian 
religion, shall such boldness be exultingly attributed 
to the strengthening of the faculties of the mind? 
A reckless violation of the moral sense is more 
shameful than tampering with the non-moral facul- 
ties of the mind. We hold that the Bible is the 
best text-book to be used in the course of man's 
moral education, and that the judgment passed on 
the ethics of Christianity by men of moral sensibili- 
ties blunted by habits of vice is a shamefully de- 
fective judgment. 

No strength of intellectual faculties can atone 
for the enfeebling of conscience. No inspiration of 
genius can make reparation for the injury done to 
the moral nature of the soul by the shameless si- 
lencing of the inspiration of conscience. If genius 
fail to cherish conscience, it is godless. The liter- 
ature that is unconscientious, and essentially soulless, 
and designedly Christless, will not ultimately satisfy 
the moral hunger and thirst, the religious yearning 
of the souls of men. Platitudes of Christian phi- 
lanthropy can not fill the place of the divine phi- 
lanthropy of the Son of God in the bleeding heart 
of humanity. Morsels of dainty literary sentiment 
with the flavor of Christless genius will not satisfy 
the consciously sinful soul hungering for righteous- 
ness. We have faith both in God and humanity 
sufficient to believe that man will ultimately protest 
against the literature which ignores the deep moral 
want of humanity, and which assigns conscience 



THE ENFEEBLED CONSCIENCE. 45 

an unimportant place in the aspiring, struggling 
soul of our race. 

The abused moral nature of man avenges itself in 
the case of persistent criminals more frequently by 
a final silence which is painless, than by remorse of 
conscience that rends the soul. This silence, as 
of death, is more terribly significant than the cry of 
remorse. 

There is a thinly disguised heartlessness of man- 
ners in some sections of fashionable society which is 
only another name for irreligiousness. The frequent 
violation of social obligations finally sullies the social 
conscience. Conscienceless friendship is a sentiment 
rising but slightly above the significance or the aim 
of the meanest self-interest. Sins against fashion- 
able propriety excite a deeper horror than sins 
against God which a false code of modern fashion 
excuses. 

There is a manifest ungodliness in the imperious- 
ness of fashion. Why should conscience bow down 
to it, succumb to it, and lose its life in such idolatry 
and such surrender? There is nothing indecorous 
in Christian conscientiousness that it should be 
banished from polite society. If the slaves of fash- 
ionable propriety were not so reckless of the pro- 
prieties of conscience, a gentle Christian spirit — a 
new social atmosphere — might become the fashion 
in society. 

There is a domain of conscience in religion, just 
as there is a domain of taste in fine art and litera- 



46 THE MASTER SOWER. 

ture. In this view, the Christ of the Gospel is as 
little comprehended by the man who has wrecked 
his conscience as the finest work of art or the 
finest work of literary genius is comprehended by 
the man who may be said to have no taste. There 
are men of highly cultivated taste in whom con- 
science is enfeebled by neglect or abuse ; neverthe- 
less such persons are apt to be proud of something 
which they imagine to be moral strength. The 
mistake is made in the weakness of moral taste. 

Here is a man, for instance, whose taste has been 
formed on classic models ; and the religious senti- 
ments of the gospel of Christ are entirely too tame 
for him. His classic models have set conscience 
far in the background. The gentleness, the self- 
renunciation, the real humanity of Christian char- 
ity — all appear to him a degradation of taste. If 
conscience be weak and taste highly cultivated, that 
proud taste will be obtrusive, and will be first to 
examine and decide upon the peculiar claims of 
Christian character. The result is not very uncer- 
tain ; an indelicate conscience is no match for pride 
of taste. 

This pride of taste passes judgment on conscience 
in others, and calls it cowardice. No duelist, infat- 
uated by a false code of honor, ever laid down his 
life with a sadder devotion than the man of taste 
divorced from conscience, who sacrifices his spiritual 
life on the altar of taste that he may avoid the im- 
putation of pusillanimity of conscience. This man 



THE ENFEEBLED CONSCIENCE. 47 

makes an unnecessary sacrifice. A conscience en- 
lightened by the spirit of Christ does not interfere 
with the most exquisite taste. 

Why should not the man of cultivated taste in 
art and literature have the enlightened moral taste 
to find pleasure in seeing men of little mental 
culture and little taste made better through the in- 
spiration of conscience in which Christ the Savior is 
recognized? There is nothing in such a view of 
evangelical religion as a cultivated mind is capable 
of taking to justify the aversion which proceeds 
from pride of taste that is ashamed of the voice of 
conscience. Nor does mental culture find justifica- 
tion for regarding moral beauty of Christian char- 
acter only as it regards beauty in fine art. 

A pride of imaginary moral strength, instead of 
consciousness of weakness, is observable in a va- 
riety of instances. There are offensively coarse 
men as ridiculously proud as men of taste. There 
are poor men as punctiliously proud as rich men. 
There are ignoramuses as obstinately proud of their 
opinions as very learned men. Given, a man with- 
out Christian virtue, without learning, without 
taste; let his conscience become enfeebled to the 
extent that he rarely, if ever, feels the slightest 
compunction, — show him a weeping, praying peni- 
tent, and he will glory in something he calls strength 
in himself, that refuses to be humbled before the 
majesty of divine law. He will regard that peni- 
tent's conscientiousness as a pitiable, contemptible 



48 THE MASTER SOWER. 

thing. In his view, a Christian is essentially a 
coward; a conscience is a something which gives 
false alarm of moral danger; the gospel of Christ 
a story for weak men, and women and children, 
which a man of mettle and muscle, like himself, may 
dismiss with contempt. 

The man of conscience enfeebled and polluted 
through vile abuse, is prone to glory in the shame 
of quenching the influences of the Holy Spirit in 
his soul. He is proud of the soiled human spirit 
that dares to insult the Divine Spirit. He is pleased 
to mar his spirit's susceptibility to the gracious im- 
pressions of the Spirit of God. The grunt of 
brutal satisfaction betrays the closing of his moral 
nature against the impressions of the Divine Na- 
ture. A self-glorification of the human spirit, 
mounted on the ruins of conscience, is thus fre- 
quently exhibited. 

An unholy sense of triumph, rather than com- 
punction, follows the collapse of the moral sense, 
and with it an unseemly gloating in the prospect of 
Atheism. A man who, in the interest of a grossly 
sinful life, has parted with the testimony of con- 
science, is a man practically without a God. In his 
narrow view, his own arm will get all his victories. 
With no impressions of Supreme Divinity in his 
sullied conscience, he will, in a characteristic man- 
ner, deify himself. Self-deification is the fatal vice 
and weakness of Atheism. When no breath of 
heaven, revealing glimpses of divine glory, is wafted 



THE ENFEEBLED CONSCIENCE. 49 

to the soul, a man will seek some other glory. If 
in no other way, he will glory in the shame of ir- 
religion; he will decorate the wreck of conscience 
with a ghastly smile of triumph; he will be pleased 
to exclaim, "See what J have done!" even though 
the vaunted achievement be the ruin of his moral 
nature. 

There are people in Christian lands who have 
no practical belief in the cardinal virtues which 
distinguish Christianity from paganism. There is, 
at the basis of the irreligiousness of Christendom, 
that which, more than anything else, accounts for it : 
it is the sin of man against his moral nature — the 
depression of the moral sense below the plane of 
practical belief in the virtues which adorn the gen- 
uinely Christian profession. 

The skepticism of the enfeebled conscience 
spurns the divine message from heaven in the meas- 
ure of the vicious silencing of the Divine Voice in 

the human soul. 

4 



VIII. 

WORLDLY-MINDEDNESS. 

THE gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, a heavenly 
message to this lower world, perpetually en- 
counters, through the successive generations of 
mankind, the resistance of a worldly-mindedness 
that effectually prevents the impression of the 
heavenly character of Christ in the human soul. 
This is another phase of the phenomenon of heavenly 
seed of truth falling in earthly soil. 

Let it be fairly considered that the Christian 
religion, with many striking marks of divine truth- 
fulness, steadily holds out the prospect of life for 
man beyond his present earthly environment. Let 
it be duly considered that the life proposed for our 
contemplation is everlasting, and befitting the glo- 
rious heaven of the Son of God. Then, it is not 
at all unreasonable to regard the heavenly life- 
view which the gospel unfolds as modifying the 
earth-view of an immortal temporarily residing on 
earth. 

The worldly-minded man receives gross impres- 
sions of the material world, instead of impressing 
the world with the marks of a spiritual nature. 
If holy angels from heaven were to dwell on earth 
for an age, and then depart, would they not leave 
50 



WORLD L Y-3IINDEDNESS. 5 1 

vestiges of heavenly ideas ? What but the fact 
that this world gets improper mastery, prevents 
man from impressing the earth with clearer signs 
of religious ideas worthy the extreme probability 
of his immortality ? AVhich is the superior, earth 
or the human soul ? Which ought to rise above 
the other ? Christian philosophy answers the ques- 
tion in a manner which may satisfy the proudest 
philosophic spirit, while it humbles only in that 
measure which makes humility beautiful. The hu- 
mility which Christ inculcates is nothing less in its 
spirit and propriety than the divinely prescribed 
condition of heavenly exaltation. It gives the soul 
a vast advantage — a mastery of the world. 

The Lord Jesus Christ is fairly and conspic- 
uously set forth as the Sun of righteousness in the 
moral firmament. Spirit-immortality is bathed in 
the light of this Sun, and derives hence its most 
glorious character of attractiveness for the desire 
of our spirits. Millions who sat in moral darkness 
in the region of death have recognized a heavenly 
spiritual light, and their fainting spirits have been 
invigorated and lifted up by the eternal truth, the 
divine grace, the glorious righteousness disclosed. 
Millions with full, glad hearts have thanked and 
praised the Creator for the Christ. 

This Sun shines clearly and gloriously in the 
moral sky. It is spanning the day of salvation for 
sinful man in time. Innumerable vain ideas of 
recovery from the wretchedness of sinfulness have 



52 THE MASTER SOWER. 

trooped through the soul of humanity along the 
ages. Mighty worldly kingdoms have risen and 
fallen. Vast experiments of a simply worldly civ- 
ilization have been tried, and have signally failed. 
The cries of sorrow and the voices of vile passions 
have been heard, with endless changes. Schemes of 
temporal and temporizing worldly philosophy have 
struggled in vain for the suffrage of humanity. 
Through all the mutations of worldly ideas, king- 
doms, civilizations, passions, philosophies, the Sun 
of righteousness, like the blazing eye of God, has 
looked steadily upon the earth during the centu- 
ries of the history of the Christian religion. 

Millions of torches have been lighted at the in- 
extinguishable flame of this Sun of righteousness. 
Yet there are dark shadows everywhere on the soul 
of humanity. What are these shadows? Why 
does not this Sun flood every soul with light? 
Why does not every human countenance reflect a 
heavenly radiance — the solar radiance of righteous- 
ness ? The answer is, that in so far as the religious 
character of many is concerned, there is an eclipse 
of the glorious Sun of righteousness. The soul is 
groveling in the deep shadow of the lower world, 
and purely Christian ideas of immortality and 
heaven are obscured. 

A human soul is a world. The provinces of a 
man's possible thought are vaster than those of the 
mightiest empire of earth. The simplest volition 
of a man's free will at this moment is in wonderful 



WORLDL Y-M1NDEDNESS. 53 

contrast with the mass of motion of the machinery 
of the material universe. Suns are man's tovs if 
he would but truly be God's child in the spirit and 
exercise of his mind. He is greater than the starry 
firmament if he would but be humbled in the pres- 
ence of God. His simplest emotion of gratitude 
to his Creator is a signal of intelligent life such as 
suns and stars have never given. Surely this earth 
should be at the feet of this child of God, this heir 
of heaven ; and earth's sounds should sometimes be 
hushed, its objects invisible, its delusions unveiled, 
while he reverently listens to the voice of the Son 
of God. In the suffering of the Son of God on Cal- 
vary is provided a shrine for the religious emotions 
of the man who is weary of laying all his offerings in 
the lap of earth. The gospel provides for the man 
who to thanksgiving for the ministry of earth will 
add praise to God for the contribution of the Christ 
to his redemption from sin and from a blind and 
soulless devotion to the world given him for pur- 
poses nobler than those suggested by irreligion. 

" What is a man profited if he should gain the 
whole world? or what shall a man give in ex- 
change for his soul/' or his spiritual life? In the 
midst of engrossing secular business, a busy man of 
the world is asked a heavenly question. In the 
midst of a palpable life, with its tangible, esti- 
mable possessions and relations, is thrust a question 
concerning the voiceless, at present almost inesti- 
mable life of the soul. 



54 THE MASTER SOWER. 

Suppose this lower world gained — its treasures, 
its pleasures, its honors; suppose nothing higher 
than the earthly life included in this gain ; suppose 
nothing in sympathy with Christ is added to life 
in the course of a soul's utmost worldly advance- 
ment, — what, then, is gained? The answer is, in a 
word, the world; but what is the profit, after all, of 
such gain of the world at the expense of spiritual 
life? Thus, if we suppose the lower world gained, 
we must suppose the higher spiritual life lost — such 
is the idea of profit and loss suggested by the Son 
of God, who was manifested from heaven to save 
men, if they will be saved, from such bad bar- 
gaining. 

It is not to be supposed that the man who has 
the mind of Jesus, walks the earth — as Jesus walked 
along the banks of Jordan and on the hills of Pal- 
estine — without an exquisite world-sense of Him 
who does, "in very deed, dwell with men on the 
earth." If the mind of a believer in the gospel is 
in genuine sympathy with the mind of Christ, a re- 
ligious sentiment equivalent to that which prompted 
the Savior's indignant " Get thee behind me, Satan," 
will not appear unworthy his pure hope of a higher 
world, while he spurns the base suggestions of am- 
bition, of avarice, and of the pleasures which de- 
base manhood. The higher, finer, heavenly life is 
not to be bartered for the gross gains of this 
present world. No number of examples of mere 



WORLDL Y-1IINDEDNESS. 55 

worldly success can justify this soulless trading 
of life. 

In the view of the gospel of Christ there are 
what may be termed the earth-side and the heaven- 
side of the human mind. In this view we find an 
explanation of the phenomenon of an acute and 
vigorous intellect utterly missing the vital signifi- 
cance of the Inspired Writings. This intellect 
simply lacks its heaven-side. It is an intellect 
deficient^ in that it is out of sympathy with the 
mind of Christ. It does not contain the Christian 
sentiment of religion; hence it ignores the Christ. 
The gospel is jargon to such an intellect, while 
it vigorously devotes itself to the task of harmon- 
izing earthly things — even the most discordant — 
without attending to their spiritual significance. 
Such an intellect will construct genuine scientific 
theories from germs of material facts; will solve 
social problems by means of slight though truly 
apprehended social phenomena; will discover ave- 
nues of profitable trade invisible to the ordinary 
observer. Yet such an intellect fails to discover in 
the gospel of Christ the germinal principles of a 
most exalted life; stumbles over the theory of a 
heavenly life ; overlooks the germs of eternal truth 
in the gospel relating to eternal life. 

The heavenly seed of religious truth falls in the 
earthly soil of this intellect, and lies motionless. 
This intellect is building character on its earth-side 



56 THE MASTER SOWER. 

exclusively. Now, let it be understood that the 
Son of God does not rebuke the manhood nor lay 
an interdict on the intellect of the man who is 
building character on the heaven-side of his nature, 
and who, in the right spirit and aim of the gospel of 
Christ, manifests to the world that he is not pre- 
dominantly worldly-minded. 



IX. 

THE CANT OF IRRELIGION. 

THERE is a rasistance to Christ which wears a 
mask, and is not distinctly outspoken. There 
are phrases which signify nothing of serious, orig- 
inal reasoning, employed by persons who reject the 
gospel of Christ, just as there are phrases which sig- 
nify nothing of enlightened piety, employed by hyp- 
ocrites and mistaken zealots. 

Let us examine some of the hackneyed phrases 
which are regarded by many as expressive of suf- 
ficient reasons for rejecting the gospel of the Lord 
Jesus Christ : 

1. Natural religion. All of religion that a man 
gets from nature and the natural evolutions of his 
consciousness is found also in the Bible. The 
writers of the Bible profaned none of the princi- 
ples of natural religion when, by Divine inspira- 
tion, they recorded the peculiar doctrines of Chris- 
tianity. The revelation of the Bible encircles every 
natural virtue with a clearer, holier light, and 
bathes these virtues in the warmth of a supernat- 
ural love. The Bible reveals divine grace for the 
man who, with all his natural virtues, is a sinner; 
places within the sinner's reach divine grace, for 
which every lingering natural virtue cries. 

57 



58 THE MASTER SO WER. 

If natural religion were sufficient for a temporal 
life, it would not be all that we need for a life 
eternal. Many temporal virtues are merely artificial 
and superficial. Many social virtues serve only for 
transient phases of earthly society. Many natural 
virtues, divested of their external appearance, are 
seen to be simply selfish, and not adapted for the 
higher range of heavenly society. 

The notion of religion which effects the least dis- 
turbance of the self-complacency of a soul of easy- 
going moral character is the notion of religion which 
some are pleased to call " natural/* as distinguished 
from revealed religion, with the seal of the super- 
natural. The man who draws sharp lines between 
the theology of nature and the theology of the Bible, 
and settles down exclusively on the land-side of re- 
ligion, is a pitiable example of " squatter sover- 
eignty." The repudiation of the religion of Christ 
involves the repudiation of almost everything that 
deserves to be called religion. All the cant of re- 
ligion that creeps into the sanctuaries of Christ is no 
worse than the cant of that profession of philosophy 
which ridicules the revealed religion, and professes 
simultaneously to be religious and unchristian. 

2. Universal or unconditional salvation. The 
dogma of unconditional salvation is no less crude 
than what some are pleased to term a ridiculous 
fear of future consequences of sin. Blasphemous 
presumption is no less objectionable than abject fear. 

It is admitted that there are childish fears of 



THE CANT OF IRRELIG10N. 59 

danger which prevent the development of manly 
Christian character; but there is also an ignoring of 
moral danger to the extent that a soul looks upon all 
moral character with utter indifference. Take, for 
example, the man w^ho has no fear of God before 
his eyes, whose only conception of the love or the 
mercy of God is of love or mercy as a shield for 
his sinning ; such a one makes his very wreck of 
moral character his armor for recklessness of con- 
sequences. He who inverts salvation in order of 
time, placing it in the distance beyond this life re- 
gardless of the moral character of this life, rather 
than in the present as a season of moral probation, 
is surely indifferent to that type of character which 
engaged the heavenly earnestness of Christ and his 
apostles. We protest, in this instance, simply against 
the idea of ultimate salvation in which many minds 
rest, while careless of the present beauty and glory 
of well-proportioned Christian character. 

3. "Fuss about religion" There are those who 
assume the possession of lofty ideas of religion, and 
who, while leading lives of easy frivolity or vicious 
indulgence, indicate by certain phrases their sensi- 
tiveness (it is to be assumed) with respect to the 
exercises that degrade religion. They are fond of 
talking of "fuss about religion." It is the cant of 
high-level heads, while "commonplace" hearts are 
struggling to take practical hold of religion. They 
regard the warm, moving sentiments of Christianity 
in earnest as disturbing elements in society. The 



60 THE MASTER SOWER. 

silly, extravagant sentimentalism of love, the boister- 
ous sentimentalism of politics, will frequently pass 
current with such, while every sentiment above the 
earth-level of their religious ideas is called " fuss." 
The doctrines of religion calmly uttered by Jesus 
Christ have often, indeed, been degraded and per- 
verted from their high and holy significance to co- 
incide with the meanest and narrowest taste and 
prejudice of men. There are persons whose eleva- 
tion in the scale of intelligence, by all the Christian 
ideas that they are able and willing to grasp, is 
scarcely perceptible. What such persons say and 
do may be regarded as curiosities of human nature, 
but will not serve to exemplify much more than the 
rude beginning of religious aspirations. Angels 
fully equipped for the lofty life of heaven are not 
born of a single, crude, penitential throe. Christ's 
doctrines of religious life are designed for the moral 
part of our education; and when no more than one 
person of thousands is found willing to study nat- 
ural science, it is not strange that the science of 
spiritual life is neglected. 

The genuine emotions of intelligent and active 
Christians have often been most grossly misrepre- 
sented. The clangor of iron creeds, the dull tones 
of morbid sympathies, the noise of the nervous ex- 
citement of masses of men, the mawkish sentiment- 
alism of minds confined to a single train of religious 
ideas, the superstitious dread, even, of the allure- 
ments of unsullied nature, — all have been mistaken 



THE CANT OF IRREL1GI0N. 61 

for the real emotions of the thoughtful Christian. 
On the contrary, the emotions of the Christian who 
has fair insight into the nature of his religion are 
chaste and modest. They rise to the solemn grandeur 
of the skies ; they are in sympathy with the match- 
less manhood of Jesus; they are the true responses 
of the human soul to the unveilings of the divinity 
of Christ the Savior; they are the deep, voiceless re- 
sponses to the invisible presence of the Holy Spirit. 
These emotions are not inconsistent with a noble 
dignity, a refined cheerfulness, a profound humility, 
and a magnanimous liberality of thinking ; and all 
with the glow and glory of a magnificent hope of 
life eternal. 

4. " Time enough yet" Attention is called to a 
class of people who believe the gospel in a feeble 
way, because not to believe would involve some 
extra effort of thinking. At the same time, these 
fail to make personal, practical use of the gospel be- 
cause that would involve some decision of character. 
Christ does not appear to them as immediately 
claiming the earnest attention of their souls, but 
as waiting their unoccupied time and convenience. 
They are too busy to be deeply anxious about moral 
character in time. The convenient season for " sal- 
vation " is supposed to be in the rapids, when the 
stream of time is plunging with them into eternity. 
They go on believing, to the day of their death, 
that they have " time enough " to go through a 
certain mechanical process of "getting religion" — 



62 THE MASTER SOWER. 

some sort of a substitute for hunger and thirst after 
righteousnesss. In their limited view, the terms of 
" salvation" are all merely technical and indicative 
of superficial ideas of religious life. A transient, 
shallow alarm is " repentance." When the alarm 
evaporates, " conversion" is supposed to follow. 
An easy presumption is the "faith" of "justifica- 
tion." A tingling of the nerves, a hallucination, 
is a "revelation." "Heaven is a high level of joy 
and safety for all that shall be technically saved in 
the sufficient time for such salvation just before the 
breath leaves the body. It is spiritual indolence, 
an indifference to development of sturdy moral 
character, a disposition to drift aimlessly through 
this life, that culminates in such phrases as "time 
enough yet." 

There is always a loud call for the religious re- 
vival — the quickened enthusiasm of the Church of 
Christ — the emphatic, startling call to repentance. 
And there is the call, not less urgent, though often 
less noisy, for something between the seasons of re- 
vival — both before and after the special, passing 
" evangelist " — and there is rarely, if ever, more 
than " time enough " between for all that needs re- 
ligiously, thoughtfully, and patiently to be done. 

5. Morality. There is a grade of morality which 
confessedly serves only temporal purposes. This 
temporal morality has an air of pretentious virtue. 
It is Christian morality only in a limited sense — so 
far as this world goes. It is friendly to the interests 



THE CANT OF IRRELIGION. 63 

of the temporal state of society. It has a certain 
value in opposition to social evils ; but it sinks far 
below the tone of Christ's sublime utterances as to 
the ultimate relations of God and man. 

This temporal morality does not know the deep 
spiritual changes that a soul may undergo in inti- 
mate faith-relation with the Divine Savior. It has 
no wide-open eye for the prospect of immortality. 
In large measure it ignores the principles that are 
to regulate the life of men in eternity beyond time. 
No such discredit is here cast upon temporal mo- 
rality as upon an utterly worthless thing; but it is 
charged w 7 ith spiritual deficiency; it is not Christ- 
like in its theory of religious life. 

The message of Christ is divinely more than a 
manual of temporal morality. AVhile all that is 
beneficial to temporal society is involved in the 
morality of the gospel, it does not rest on so low a 
plane. The application of the moral principles of 
the gospel in the ever-changing affairs of human 
life on earth is incidental to the infinitely grander 
aim of those principles transcending all the possi- 
bilities of human life on earth. 

While the Son of God speaks with greater than 
the tongue of man or of angels ; inculcates eternal 
morality; tragically exemplifies by his death the 
divine principle of fallen man's redemption from 
the guilt, the bondage, and the sorrow of his fatal 
habit of sin ; and points with his bleeding hands to 
heaven, all ablaze w T ith the holy glory of God, — 



64 THE MASTER SOWER. 

shall one who fails to accept the divine message in 
the depths of his soul, rest in those superficial vir- 
tues of temporal utility which are only incidental 
to the progress of the Christian toward the higher, 
the highest life ? 

Sometimes a mere fragment of Christ's own sys- 
tem of morality — a virtue which, by itself, will not 
bear a severe test — is made to oppose the distin- 
guishing spirit and complete aim of Christ. In 
this manner Christ is really resisted through a 
gross lack of symmetry of character. We do not 
refer in this instance to imperfect men of genuine 
Christian spirit, but to imperfect men both in fact 
and in spirit, who, possessing a solitary Christian 
virtue through force of circumstances, as a matter 
of temporal convenience, regard it as a badge of 
perfection, while they leave the spiritual domain of 
the Divine Savior unexplored. The objection to 
this one dominant virtue is, that it is made as 
serviceable as a vice in resisting the broad aim of 
Christ, and in rejecting the complete Christian 
character. 



X. 

THE METHOD OF SKULKING. 

THERE are " highways and hedges" on earth 
where men are skulking and running away 
from Christ, who is divinely calling them heaven- 
ward. There are a thousand ways besides serious 
reasoning, to live in this world just as if it were 
utterly Christless — just as if the best of all possible 
success were to evade the divine light that streams 
from the gospel of Christ upon that path of life 
which shines brighter and brighter unto the full- 
orbed day of final success in heaven. 

After all other methods oi* resisting the life- 
claims of the gospel have been exhausted, there 
often remains the process of cunningly avoiding the 
Christ-truth. 

It is not always necessary to run out of sight of 
sacred things in order to avoid them. In the very 
place where God delights to reveal his gracious 
presence to the yearning spirit of right faith, there 
the spirit of unfaith may skulk, just as the first 
fallen Adam skulked behind the trees in the beau- 
tiful garden of the Lord. The sounds that fall 
upon the dull ear of unfaith, even in the very 
house of God, suggest no moving, inspiring thoughts 
of God and heaven to the soul preoccupied with 

5 65 



6 6 THE MASTER SO WER. 

sordid ideas. The time that should be sincerely 
devoted to worship is given to searching for flaws 
in the human material of the spiritual temple of 
Christ, just as one looks for knots in lumber, that 
he may scold the designer and builder of a house. 
The right spirit of worship will recognize in the 
religion which God offers for man's acceptance that 
which gives the mind profound peace, fills the mind 
with the most glorious beauty, turns the mind in 
the direction which leads to God, and pleases as no 
art can please the soul. 

Whether men will or will not, their natural lives 
are swiftly passing. Now they are at the point of life 
where, by an easy act of trust, they can take Christ 
by the hand; and now — they are borne beyond the 
point. They can now return only through a more 
difficult effort of the will than they have made be- 
fore. They will be tempted to avoid the paths 
where Christ most loves to walk. They look at their 
soiled hands, and hide them. They skulk behind 
the most convenient habit that will keep them away 
from the house of God. 

In every house of worship, where Christ the 
Lord is faithfully preached, there are processes go- 
ing on in the minds of men which fully verify the 
predictions of the gospel concerning its own vicis- 
situdes, as exhibited in the character and conduct 
of free men on the earth. As in Christ's Parable 
of the Sower, the heavenly seed of Christ-truth is 
sown in earthly soil, and some of it is lost. 



THE METHOD OF SKULKING. 67 

In every Christian congregation there are some 
who are growing better; others who are growing 
worse — there is either progress or retrogression of 
religious life. No one is without spiritual move- 
ment, either toward or away from heaven. He who 
is moving toward the Christian heaven, feels some 
degree of respect for Christianity, notwithstanding 
some perplexities of belief in his mind. In the 
depths of his honorable soul he feels some degree 
of sympathy with the Christian character and life, 
and does not sullenly shrink from contact with the 
thoroughly Christian believer. What devout men 
call the house of God is very far from appearing as 
a pagan temple to him who is moving toward the 
Christian heaven. 

He whose spiritual movement is away from the 
Christian heaven, often frets in the house of God, 
is like one who goes out before the benediction, sees 
here and there a stunted man of Christian profes- 
sion, pronounces the Christian life a delusion, and 
doubts that there ever was in all the world a person 
as good as Jesus the Son of God. This man passes 
out from the house made with hands, goes beyond 
the sound of the human voice that preaches Christ, 
sullenly slinks away from the sound of singing and 
praying. He makes his escape from Christ. Is he 
a victor, or is he a moral coward? Is the Lord 
Jesus Christ defeated because this man runs away ? 
Is the mission of Christ to mankind a failure be- 
cause this man dodges responsibility? 



68 THE MASTER SOWER. 

Men will ring the old, old changes on such words 
as "creed," "superstition," "priestcraft," "hypoc- 
risy," " reason." They will tell you that it is of no 
possible use to pray ; for God knows what we need, 
if, indeed, we need God at all. They will never 
whisper to you of the peace which nestles in the 
heart that is made tender by the prayer of trust in 
the Lord. They will tell you that in the midst of 
fixed laws of nature there is no room for the play 
of any special divine providences for any special di- 
vine purposes. They may not tell you how r foolishly 
they "wait for something to turn up" to save them 
from digging for something to eat. They are the 
slaves of special chances, who ought not to twit the 
children of God for their faith in special provi- 
dences. 

It may be put down to the credit of the religious 
instinct in a man's soul, that he can not always, at 
any time he chooses, coolly dismiss the claims of re- 
ligion; but it is a shame for him to skulk out of 
sight of the cross of Christ because in its presence 
he can neither break it down nor keep it from 
touching his heart. 

How many are using soft pleasures to lull the con- 
science, and to take the sharp edge from moral convic- 
tions! These are the pleasures which make one to 
appear like an innocent child of nature. He laughs ; 
he plays; he sings ; he cries only with a smile shining 
through his tears, — but, for all this, he is not a real 
child of God. Give him a religious duty to perform 



THE METHOD OF SKULKING. 69 

that is not pleasant at the moment, and he frets. 
You will see that he has been using his pleasures as 
foils against the Holy Spirit's approaches to his 
heart. Playing clown here like a child in the sun- 
shine of earth, a whole universe of divine joys has 
been hidden from his gaze. As easily as a little 
child lifts its eyes and looks into the sky, this child 
of nature might enter a new world, and be a man, 
without in the least spoiling the instincts of his 
childhood. To be childlike will not spoil a man's 
science, if his science is not spoiling his heart. 
Neither will it spoil his play, if he is not playing 
like a fool. 

There are those who are running a desperate race 
to keep themselves clear of the holy influences of 
the gospel of Christ. They but thinly disguise the 
fact that they stay away from the churches because 
they know that they are not sufficiently strong or 
confirmed in their unbelief to feel at ease while the 
divine claims of Christ are every Sunday pressed 
upon their attention, held up before their eyes, 
dinned into their ears, stinging their conscience, in- 
viting the affections of their reluctant hearts. From 
year to year they become more averse to a decided 
change of habits of life. They very well know 
that, at the first serious intention to reform, a mass 
of rubbish must be cleared away from their lives. 
It is not that which they conceive that the Holy 
Spirit is to do, which they fear and from which 
they shrink ; it is rather the work which the con- 



70 THE MASTER SOWER. 

scious self is to do. They have become morally 
lazy, and they know it whenever they make a 
slight effort of religious thinking. They have com- 
mon sense enough to know that they must take some 
pains to reform, and that they can not do it all in a 
single day. 

There are some people who profess to be Chris- 
tians, and fail to be honest men. There are others 
who profess to be honest men, and fail to be sincere 
Christians. This boasted honesty, which a man ex- 
hibits as the adornment of his non-profession of 
Christ, is often simply another name for the clear 
intention to dodge anything that tends to infuse 
into his life the life of Christ. He is not at all he- 
roic. At every turn of his natural life he is dodg- 
ing the significance of the divinely straightforward 
life of the Redeemer of men. His own crooked 
course, this " artful dodger " calls straight. He 
does not stand up and sajr: "I am a sinner. I will 
mend my life, the grace of God assisting me." He 
is ashamed of such an honest attitude as that before 
God and fellow-men ; but he is proud to say : " I know 
that I am not a good man, but I do not intend to 
be a hypocrite." That settles the matter. There 
is virtue; there is honesty; there is a shining ex- 
ample of rebuke of all the world's hypocrisy ! 
This man will secure a measure of applause suffi- 
cient to satisfy his soul. We do not argue with him 
about the matter of fact which he advances with so 
much unction of natural honesty. He carries no 



THE METHOD OF SKULKING. 71 

counterfeit of religion; but he makes without re- 
gret a confession which leaves one in painful un- 
certainty as to what he may counterfeit before he 
runs all his wayward course beneath the Sun of 
righteousness. 



XL 



JOY EXTRAORDINARY— DUTY OR= 
DINARY. 

THE gospel of Christ misapprehended — this is 
one of the vicissitudes of the precious seed of 
Christ-truth illustrated by the Parable of the 
Sower. 

Mere physical sensations misapprehend Christ. 
Merely superficial character misapprehends him. 
He is misapprehended when superstitiously used 
merely as a talisman against evil — when his bleed- 
ing flesh veils his Divinity from the sensual eye of 
unfaith. The Lord Jesus Christ is misapprehended 
when a transient exhilaration of animal spirits is 
mistaken for the profound change of heart, in the 
light of the Divine countenance, which follows 
one's insight into the inner world which the senses 
conceal from the eye of faith in spiritual and divine 
things. 

The heavenly message of Christ too often has 
been but feebly and superficially grasped, even 
though with much demonstration of emotion and 
much perturbation of sensations, in certain condi- 
tions of mind ill prepared to retain divine truth 
essential in the formation of firm Christian 
character. 
72 



JO Y EXTRA ORDINAR Y—D UTY ORDINAR Y. 73 

Second-hand notions of salvation have taken 
precedence of what may be termed the process of 
Christian characterization — the impressing of the 
real character of Christ in the soul. The influ- 
ences of the Holy Spirit have been lodged in mere 
strata or folds of ecclesiastical traditions and prej- 
udices that have made men mere imitators of sacred 
things, of the divine significance of which they had 
not the slightest comprehension. In this case there 
were really no fresh openings of the heart to the 
divine impressions that quicken character fit for 
heaven ; or, if there w T ere such openings, they were 
quickly closed — as a tender flower closes at the first 
frost — when religious duty called, showing that the 
Christ-truth, for life, was misapprehended. 

It is very evident that the Savior, in his Par- 
able of the Sower, had in view a class of people 
who, in a manner, receive the gospel for but little, 
if any, more than a superficial or fictitious joy. 
They are persons who depend too much on transient 
surface emotions and sensations in religion, and who 
think but lightly of the gravity and solemn grandeur 
of the religion of Jesus. 

There is a deep, rich joy in the real experience 
of the grace of Christ; but many get an erroneous 
idea of it because, in their thoughts and purposes, 
they divorce Christian joy and Christian duty. 

In every community there are many who be- 
lieve in a vague way that Christ is the Savior of 
men, who, nevertheless, go on sinning. They do 



74 THE MASTER SOWER. 

not take hold of the vital idea of divine forgive- 
ness of sin. They do not take the idea into their 
minds for practical use. It does not shine out on 
straightforward paths toward heaven. Thousands 
of such people might, by a more specific trust in 
the Divine Savior, fill this land with the glory of 
Christ. They might act all the time like men fully 
persuaded that their sins are forgiven, and be in- 
tensely thankful ; but instead of this, they leave to 
shallow souls, in whom the seed of Christ-truth 
takes no deep root, to displease the unbelieving 
world with a transient, vaporous joy that rises from 
no depths of the soul, and rises indeed from the 
surface of the soul only in unpromising circum- 
stances of outward and violent excitement. 

The man who weeps like a child of nature be- 
cause he intensely feels that he has sinned against 
his God, changes from heaviness of spirit to over- 
flowing, buoyant gladness, as a child bounds from 
grief to joy, with a suddenness that surprises the 
stolid man of the world. The agony of his convic- 
tion of sinfulness rends his soul. His sorrow 
gnaws at his heart. The sky above him changes 
to blackness. As long as men continue to sin like 
childish thinkers, it is not to be expected that they 
will return to God like majestic philosophers. 
When the nervous system breaks down with grief 
and alarm, it is not strange that joy comes in like 
a flood when Christ appears like a real Deliverer. 

The day may come when all men may be trusted 



JO Y EXTRA ORDINAR Y—D UT Y ORDINAR Y. 75 

with a less violent conviction of sinfulness, and 
still sincerely and practically repent toward God, if 
they do wrong; when habits of sin, now scarcely 
recognized as wrong, shall make men really sad ; 
when settled peace, rather than vaporous ecstasy, 
shall follow the sadness of a soul that is thought- 
ful of God and religious duty; when religious joy- 
ousness shall be the frequent result of the souFs 
steadfast gazing into heaven, at the points of view 
where opening heaven shines most brightly on the 
pathway of religious duty. 

Christian joy often rises as high above the level 
of one's ordinary life as sorrow for the past of his 
life of sin sinks below that level. A purer joy may 
indeed be more quiet, may rise higher, and keep 
more steadily on the wing. Just as long as men are 
found who are thoughtless of all religious experi- 
ences until the soul is mad with its want and hunger, 
and clanger assumes most horrid shape, we shall see 
the outward signs of sudden, violent changes; and 
men, as they come to the cross of Christ, will con- 
tinue to manifest a wild, delirious joyousness, which 
is the reaction from the uncontrollable fear and 
sorrow that urged them to seek relief at the cross 
of Christ. 

We do not base the entire evidence of the truth 
of the gospel on nothing more than feelings ; still 
there is real joy closely following real faith in the 
Divine Savior. The joy nestles in the soul very 
close to the faith. One may receive Christ down 



76 THE MASTER SOWER. 

deep in his soul, to yield him a glorious joy forever; 
or he may feel only an agitation of the surface, or a 
transient sensation. If there is anything in sin 
which one may reasonably fear; if the fear may 
become a pain, and the pain may pass away only 
through the hope of the gospel and faith in Christ, — 
well may the soul that had become dulled by sin, re- 
joice, once at least, with joy beyond description, 
though the earthly life thereafter be one long trial, 
sustained only by the undercurrent of religious 
peace and occasional glimpses of gladness shining 
on the rough places in the pathway of Christian 
dutv. 

The recollection of the initial joy of the convert 
is not to be regarded as a talisman against all moral 
danger for the future. All along the course of the 
gospel of Christ on earth are blasted lives, like 
withered trees in thin and rocky soil — lives of men 
who received the Savior when danger pressed, who 
found relief in momentary belief; but the roots of 
their joy were scorched by the first fiery temptation 
or trial. 

There is a joy of conversion in a penitent's sud- 
denly vitalized hope of heaven; not the mature 
hope of the faithful old pilgrim whose sore feet 
have carried him through the thorny way, at last, 
near the home which life's trials have made imme- 
diately welcome to his heart. The hope of which 
we speak just now is the hope of heaven which we 
sometimes see flashing in the soul as from the ashes 



JO Y EXTRA ORDINAR Y—D UTY ORDINAR Y. 77 

of the dead past. Poor, poverty-stricken penitent ! 
Heaven bad seemed to him for years like a far-off, 
fantastic dream. He had thought of heaven only 
as far away, utterly beyond his reach. In his vision 
there had appeared only the cold, white outlines of 
a religious temple in the distant sky. Unearthly 
angels flitted here and there in the. somber light. 
Graves had been closed over, and grave human 
spirits had gone up to sing in the high, rare atmos- 
phere which stifles the breath of natural life. 

It is possible that the joy born of the first hope 
of heaven in many a soul is far more unnatural 
than God designed for the human heart on earth. 
It may be that heaven, though beautiful, appears too 
far away, and that there are false notes in the song 
of joy strained for so great a distance. There is, 
indeed, a joy of hope springing from the very bosom 
of a sorrow stained with sin, yet which is wedded 
to an intelligent, high, and holy purpose of Chris- 
tian life; and there is a joy which is little more 
than a tickled fancy of heaven in souls too shallow 
for any vigorous purpose of real amendment of life. 

There is a hope of heaven which suddenly il- 
lumines the heart sick of sin. There is a sudden, 
sharp, overpowering turn of one's thoughts heaven- 
ward. There is a veiling, for the instant, of the 
weary route, the refining fire, the pauses, the starts, 
the tests, the disappointments, in the Christian 
course of life. There is a clearing away of the 
things of sense that too often blind the eye of faith 



7 8 THE MAS TEE SO WEE. 

to the " substance of things hoped for." There is 
the Christian hope of heaven that is infinitely more 
than fancy. We need to be converted over as often 
as this world confines our souls in its hard crusts. 
Instead of one, and only one, rigid conversion to 
serve for this life and the next, let there be frequent 
illuminations of a well-sustained hope of heaven, on 
the way to heaven wherein a dutiful Christian is 
vigorously walking. 

How often we cheat our own souls, giving them 
the hope of heaven that is not earned by obedience, 
in the place of the peace that attends the faithful 
performance of our religious duties ! We could not 
be so easily robbed if we were not so willing to 
yield our souls to the illusions of the senses. There 
are specters before the eye of our faith; and we 
pursue them, running where the Lord has told us 
not to go. AVe are like children chasing the bright 
spots floating in the air immediately after the eyes 
have looked at the sun. Yet have we not, with the 
natural eye, looked into the sun though millions of 
miles of luminous cloud in wrapped its central fire? 
Have we not looked into heaven, however thick 
the luminous cloud that veiled the majesty of Him 
who sits upon the throne? O the joy that blessed 
the heart when first, after weary years of sinning, 
we sincerely looked toward and longed for heaven, 
and beheld what the purified fancy embellished ! 
If we cherish with reasonable religious care, as long 
as we live on earth, the " hope that maketh not 



JO Y EX TRA ORDINAR Y—D UT Y ORDINA RY. 79 

ashamed," we need not be ashamed of that first joy, 
though it may not come again just as at the first. 

To be overpowered by excess of emotion does 
not invariably convey to our minds the idea of the 
supernatural. A trance in the name of religion is 
not unquestionably a miracle. There is a marked 
difference between the volatile emotions of one who 
trusts to the external machinery of religious ex- 
citements, and the joy of another who distinctly 
traces in his soul the reason for his rejoicing. The 
latter feels his spirit reconstructed. His soul is 
responsive to the chaste beauty of holiness. His 
spiritual vision is cleared ; clouds have melted aw T ay 
in the light of heaven. His new horizon stretches 
far away beyond the confines of earth. He knows 
that the Savior met him at the moment of his ex- 
traordinary trust. He is supported, he knows, 
though he falls into invisible arms. Is not his 
very trust something new, wonderful, and blessed? 
Where is the sense in saying that God must be ap- 
proached, if approached at all, only by the senses? 
Precious new sense of the soul — if we must talk 
of sense — that can touch the Everlasting, who gave 
the mountains their shapes and the seas their 
bounds ! The soul that has realized the birth of 
its new power of trust in God, foresees, as by a 
spiritual or religious instinct, something of its use 
in the future. 

It can not be denied that very many have so 
misapprehended the gospel as to substitute a sen- 



80 THE MASTER SOWER. 

sual love of joy, even in religion, for the chaste, 
heavenly joy of love. They approached the Savior 
with something of the manner of going to a wed- 
ding. The invitation to a wedding conveyed to 
their minds a vision of the gross feast — it had 
something of the flavor and the exhilaration of 
sparkling wine. They thought of the beauty and 
gayety, music and dancing. They dreamed that it 
would be a jovial change from the dull monotony 
of their days to go to a wedding. Where social 
life is vaporous and thin, and one's surroundings 
are dull and listless, his satiated little soul may find 
a new satisfaction in astonishing his neighbors in a 
new role of joy outside the ordinary channel of 
their lives. At the same time he does not exhibit 
any extraordinary veneration for religion. He uses 
the sublime mysteries of religion as fuel to feed a 
flame like the flash from gunpowder. 

That joy must be fictitious — there must be some- 
thing of pseudo-religious sensationalism in it — which 
lifts one apparently to the very gate of heaven, and 
then, in a few days, abruptly drops him back to the 
very same spot of earth's dust and mire that he had 
left. There is something wrong in such gymnas- 
tics of religious joy. There is something weak in 
this joy besides the ordinary frailty of human na- 
ture. If we see that a multitude every year go up 
with a single bound to heaven's gate, only to fall 
back immediately upon the hard earth, not to re- 
bound until they are dashed again as upon a spring- 



JO Y EXTRA 0RD1NAR Y—D UTY ORDINAR Y. 81 

board, why not try to lead them by a more peace- 
ful — though, at first, not so exhilarating — way, 
along a plainer path of Christian duty, with proper 
recreations, to home at last, with better religious 
common sense? 

In the course of the Christian journey home, it 
will be seen how this joy extraordinary is often in 
conflict with duty ordinary. 



XII. 

THIN SOIL. 

THE Lord Jesus Christ clearly foresaw and 
plainly pointed out, in the Parable of the 
Sower, the class of people who receive the gospel 
with great demonstration of joy, and in a very short 
time fall away from it without regret. 

We need not always be deceived as to the Christ- 
likeness of the Church by the mere numbers that, 
for a short time, appear to be taking the kingdom 
of heaven by storm. The Lord did not make a 
mere arithmetical calculation. He did not intimate 
that those who rejoice only for a season, and then 
speedily fall away, should always outnumber, in a 
season of religious revival, those who count the 
cost of a Christian course of life. The bare fact 
that in every community a multitude of people 
may be, with comparative ease, manipulated into a 
nervous, characterless joyousness for a season, should 
be, to the thoughtful Church, a constant caution. 
The Savior referred plainly to the peculiar sus- 
ceptibility of this class of people. He has warned 
us that there are ways of stirring these airy sus- 
ceptibilities which will do this class of people no 
real, permanent, religious good. It is not best for 
them to have the sweets of the gospel thrown down 
82 



THIN SOIL. 83 

their throats as a reward for their simple effort of 
holding their mouths wide open. They have no- 
tions of " getting religion" from revival to revival 
just as often as their insipid natural lives require a 
new sensation. They should be shamed out of such 
notions. 

The sprouts of morbid joy in the thin soil of 
the revival-field are continually reappearing, though 
repeatedly cut down to the ground. There is also 
a sickly sentimentalism that feeds upon traditions 
of past revivals — revivals under peculiar conditions 
which do not now exist, and with phases which can 
not, in the nature of things, be reproduced. Yet 
this sensationalism struggles for a conspicuous 
place amidst the new, but not the less genuinely 
religious or Christian, channels of thought that 
mark the quickened life of the Church of the 
present. 

Anything that is worth thinking about at all 
should have, and will have, its seasons of quicken- 
ing in our minds. Why should we make an ex- 
ception in the instance of religion ? Anything that 
has any claim on our belief as of the highest value, 
should certainly throw around us at times the spell 
of an intense realization — even the realization of 
the supernaturally spiritual. While we are in our 
flagging flesh and blood we will become familiar 
with divine things, and call them natural. The 
spiritual force and significance will die out of 
things while we handle them. The significance of 



84 THE MASTER SOWER. 

heavenly things will escape our minds in stale def- 
initions. The liability to weariness is wrapped up 
in our earthly nature. There is a certain amount 
of waste going on in the process of any man's 
growing. 

We believe in seasons of the simultaneous think- 
ing of a mass of people on one and the same sub- 
ject. Such seasons will come as long as men live 
together on earth — in religion as well as in other 
things — whether we believe in them or fight against 
them. There is as much of law in these seasons 
of revival en masse — as much of spirit and of 
sense — as in the ebb and flow of the individual life. 
And these revivals en masse, just as in the case of 
the individual, are subject to criticism and censure 
if they go wrong. 

Enthusiasm — God coming in and filling the 
soul — often becomes fanaticism before men are 
aware that God has abandoned them to the vaga- 
ries of their own minds. Men have gone astray 
like sheep — and like sheep they have come back to 
God — in flocks. Still, in the case of the flock that 
has wandered and scattered, the Good Shepherd 
may gather them up one by one, and take to his 
bosom to warm the solitary lamb, lost in the wil- 
derness, shivering with cold. There is hope of 
many, sinning with a marked individuality, each of 
whom may return at the Master's call, like the one 
lost sheep in the wilderness. We believe in the 
revival en masse. We believe also in these men, 



THIN SOIL. 85 

capable of isolated enthusiasm — the zeal of the in- 
dividual when he makes up his mind and a revival 
has taken place in himself. 

The people who, in the visible Church to-day, 
exemplify the most thoroughly practical, thoughtful, 
and vigorous Christian character are often found to 
be those who, in the process of reaching a rational 
zeal-point, most clearly preserve their individuality. 
The source of their new purpose of personal re- 
ligious life was not the peculiar blaze of a general 
revival. It may have been that the flame of a 
strong and genuine religious purpose, on the part 
of these exemplary Christians, kindled in the minds 
of combustible people a blaze which was only the 
transient semblance of religious zeal, and which 
speedily burned out. There w T as the mockery, by 
a wild crowd, of the rational zeal of the few in 
whose quickened purpose there was the promise of 
ripe fruit of practical Christian life. 

In every community there is a crowd of injudi- 
cious people who feed the blaze and starve the 
hungering individual. They are never satisfied 
with one's purpose until he acts as if he had no 
religious purpose. They are never satisfied with a 
revival until, like boys at a bonfire, they have piled 
on trash sufficient to extinguish it. Years after- 
ward is seen, here and there, a person who has sur- 
vived such a revival. A multitude there are, de- 
posited by such a revival, piled up in the Church, 
like decayed, useless driftwood- % _ 



86 THE MASTER SOWER. 

The Master Sower is sowing the seed over a wide 
range of fields. There is a sense in which it may be 
said that the revival-field is the rocky field, the field 
of thin soil. It is in this field that we most fre- 
quently witness the antics of sensations mistaken for 
the graces of the Spirit. It is in this field that we 
meet with the class of people, in large numbers, 
whom the Savior describes as " receiving the word 
with joy, and having no root." If we diligently 
work to gather the rocks out of this field, we may 
gather in a more substantial harvest of good wheat. 
The field needs cultivating; it needs top-dressing 
and subsoiling. It is a field, and is not to be 
given up as hopelessly useless. 

The master designs to keep us at work in all his 
fields. There is some good, deep soil in the crev- 
ices of the rocks in this revival-field. Some good 
wheat grows there ; but we suspect that good wheat 
may be produced in other fields that are worth cul- 
tivating. All the land is Christ's. We see much 
rich, ripe fruit all around — lives of Christians active 
in practical charity, energetic in religious enter- 
prise, patient in tribulation, heroic in the face of 
temptation — fruit which did not spring up in what 
we call the revival-field, nevertheless in the Master's 
fields, and, doubtless, in the vision of the Master 
Sower when he said, " The fields are white unto the 
harvest." 

We are under no necessity of depreciating genuine 
revivals in order to appreciate the people who "join 



THIN SOIL. 87 

the Church " from time to time in seasons of relig- 
ious calm, and resolutely go straightforward. There 
must be revivals; the Church without them be- 
comes as a stagnant pool. The waters need stirring 
and sweetening. The best Christians, ever and 
anon, need that they should " stir the gift of God 
that is in them." However, he who goes straight- 
forward faithfully in the path of Christian duty will 
not fail to have his revival. The Lord, in the 
providence which attends Christian life, will not 
suffer the dutiful soul to wear out with never a 
fragrant breath of springtime. A revival is to the 
dutiful soul a time of refreshing. The stillness pre- 
ceding the time of refreshing is not in his case the 
stillness of death nor the calmness of indifference to 
the grace of the Lord. 

What permanent religious good comes to the 
world through perpetuating morbid joy? It was 
nothing more than morbid joy, springing from souls 
of no depth, implied in Christ's description of the 
class of persons w T ho "receive the word with joy," 
and almost immediately "fall away." It can not 
be truly said that they are blameless in having no 
depth of soil. There is enough soil about any re- 
sponsible human life to produce some fruit other 
than this morbid joy. The man who lazily and in- 
differently receives the seed of anything and every- 
thing that grows, is wearing away and wasting the 
soil. 

There will not be any the less genuine, whole- 



88 THE MASTER SOWER. 

some joyousness in a community where faithful, 
steady-going, wholesomely-growing Christians have 
discouraged morbid religious sensationalism. There 
will not be any the less rational prospect of a re- 
vival which shall set Christ in a clearer light, and 
that shall quicken the pulse of cheerful Christian 
effort, in a community where the blazing of dis- 
torted religious passions and the delirium of re- 
ligious feverishness have been discouraged or dis- 
countenanced. Not one more ignorant soul will be 
lost for the time spent in clearing aw r ay the rubbish 
and in putting more soil on Christ's revival-field. 
Has not the Master Sower been waiting long for 
his subordinate sowers of the precious seed to do 
something more in order to get more soil on the 
rocks? The seed of Christ-truth has been shame- 
fully wasted where long since it should have taken 
deeper root. 



XIII. 

TEMPTATION. 

THE highest perfection of liberty is to do ex- 
actly as one pleases, without pleasing to do 
wrong. God is educating men on earth for liberty 
in heaven. There is a " glorious liberty of the 
children of God." Every one loves to do as he 
pleases, and to feel that his actions smoothly follow 
the bent of his inclination. Man is pleased with 
the consciousness that he is a monarch, though his 
domain is comparatively small. 

The noblest Christian character on earth is 
formed through the right use of liberty. This 
personal character is penetrated through and through 
with the consciousness of freedom. Good character, 
which bears the impress of heroic struggle against 
temptation is the beginning of liberty that has 
something of heaven in it. 

Has one foolishly prayed that God would make 
him a sort of iron-clad man, whom powerful evils 
might pelt without touching his feelings? He 
wants to be armored so as to sail onward without 
resisting evil, or to give battle without danger. 
He wants every exquisite feeling, except the con- 
sciousness of practical freedom to quit playing with 
the evil which is too strong for play. He wants to 

89 



90 ] THE MASTER SOWER. 

play like a child with fire, and not be burned. He 
wants liberty, without its incidents and its perils, 
while he is reaching its end. He wants God to edu- 
cate him by closing up all the avenues of his soul 
which evil may enter, notwithstanding he needs just 
such openings of the soul for the formation of re- 
sponsibly good character. 

Say that the Lord converts a soul by inspiring 
it with divine love which is given him by the Holy 
Spirit. Does he not remember that, " where the 
Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty?" Does he 
not know that liberty in this world, where the air is 
full of evils, will almost immediately subject him to 
the test of an earthling ? Yes, an earthling — a can- 
didate for the higher perfection of the liberty of 
heaven. 

The Holy Spirit is ready, and graciously willing 
to help an earthling. A soul conscious of cold- 
ness may be warmed in the love of God. A sin- 
ner purposing to lead a new life may find the Di- 
vine Comforter whom Christ promised, with whom 
to start in a new life. At the very start he may 
have a wrong idea, or no idea, of temptation, and fail. 

Happy in temptation ? Not exactly ; but happy 
in victories over temptation. One rejoices in the 
illumination of his souPs first definite approach to 
the Sun of righteousness. He is new-born of the 
Spirit. Old things — even the old world of nature — 
have become new, transfigured before his eyes. His 
soul rests like a sleeping infant in the midst of 



TEMPTATION. 91 

dangers that appall the stout-hearted. His spirits 
are soothed as by the spell of heavenly singing. 
What will he do after a few days, when the scene of 
dazzling, heavenly light changes, and earthly things 
are again clothed in their more somber colors? 
How will he use his liberty when his old self rec- 
ognizes his old habits and associations, and strug- 
gles with his old fondness for things which in his 
new purpose of life he had repudiated? What will 
he do? Let us hope that he will regard the reno- 
vated determination to get out of the way of temp- 
tation as speedily and wisely as possible as a part of 
that process which was made significant by joy in 
the Holy Spirit. 

When one's heart is religiously changed for the 
better, not everything outside of his heart is 
changed at the same time. The man with a changed 
heart may look even from the divine glory of his 
illumination, and make a mistake. The little child 
may not yet play with impunity upon " the hole of 
the asp." 

You have seen a class of people gulp notions of 
salvation, and fill themselves like religious gor- 
mands. The fine gold clutched by unclean hands 
has become dim before your eyes. You have been 
astonished to see how a coarse, sensual nature may 
appropriate the fine things of religion, to which 
finer natures have attained only through patient 
growth in grace, trials faithfully endured, and temp- 
tations vanquished. 



92 THE MASTER SOWER. 

You have been surprised to observe such a large 
number of people, after so much that has appeared 
extraordinary — after violently rejoicing for a brief 
season — "fall away" with the most ordinary temp- 
tation. Their exaltation was into the region alto- 
gether removed from the evils in ordinary life, 
which the patient wayfaring man must surmount, 
or go around in a natural way, with a will relig- 
iously determined. 

The Heavenly Father loves his child, tempted, 
just as much as he loved his child when it looked 
up with the first smile of its new religious life, 
and met the light of God's countenance. We 
doubt not that the. Father looks as graciously and 
tenderly upon the soul in its first temptation as he 
looks upon it in its first love. Is not God pre- 
pared for the contingencies in the life of one who, 
with the joy of a new, heavenly life in his soul, 
starts out on an untried path? The young convert, 
in the temptation that surprises him, need not 
doubt the love of God, who knows it all from the 
beginning. 

An old besetting sin suddenly springs up in the 
path of the young convert, and stares him in the 
face — the face still shining with the radiance of the 
heaven into which he has just been rapturously 
gazing. He had not thought that this sin, in just 
these circumstances, would again confront him; 
but it meets him, just as he happens to meet a per- 
son on the street. Shall he impatiently cry out, 



TEMPTATION. 93 

"The Divine Presence does not shield me?" Shall 
the love that was just beginning to exalt his life 
expire, because the Lord, in permitting him to con- 
front a temptation so unexpectedly, seems — only 
seems — in the dim light of his faith, to have aban- 
doned him to an accident of religious life? Let 
him remember that when he was first a child of 
God, he thought as a child; he played as a child 
plays, with the sparkle of sunbeams on the ground. 
Now let him look above the darkling "powers of 
the air." There is brightness beyond. If he enter 
not into temptation — if he play not with the ugly 
sins, nor become familiar with them — he will soon 
see more of the divine love than he did when it 
first touched his soul with its sweet surprise; for 
the love of God will be recognized as his shield, if 
he is determined to be valiant. 

Let no one, in his seasons of religious exalta- 
tion, suppose that his imagination alone is sufficient 
to deal with his temptations. Agreeable fancies 
may go with him to the place of temptation. Ex- 
perience of hard realities is constantly rectifying 
the mistakes that he makes in his excursions of 
fancy. He comes down from his glorious elevation 
to attend to some of the simple duties of life. It 
is good for him often to act like an ordinary mor- 
tal. It is good for him sometimes to rise on wings 
sublime, and view himself forever more than mor- 
tal; but for the present he is engaged to keep his 
soul from being sullied by some little meanness; 



94 THE MASTER SOWER. 

some rash misconduct; some vein of dishonesty, 
with a tendency to run through his life — a bad 
streak which no fancy can embellish. 

Would you have the Almighty lift you as by a 
whirlwind, as if to hurl you over a mountain, in 
order to get you on another side of that over which 
you can easily step? Does one need a beatific 
vision to keep him from lying or cheating, to pre- 
vent his being cross or cruel ? Truth, honesty, 
and kindness are glorified close to the earth, in the 
light of the sun. One is sometimes tempted to 
mar the glory of common truth and honesty for 
the sake of a little temporal advantage. He is 
tempted to give his temper a little license at the 
expense of the comfort of his friends. These temp- 
tations are of a nature not to be smothered with 
fancies dropping from the glory on high, into which 
one idly gazes, instead of cultivating the common 
but useful fruit of a Christian life. Even the first 
Adam had something to do, to take care of the 
useful as well as the ornamental, in his Garden 
of Eden. 

One need not laboriously search for the thorn- 
iest way to heaven. He need not distress his soul 
with fears that he is in the wrong way because no 
thorns pierce his flesh; but having received the 
gospel with joy, let him not therefore jump to the 
conclusion that the Lord has entirely exempted him 
from meeting temptation like a man. 

The failure at the start manfully to grapple 



TEMPTATION. 95 

with temptation often determines a low grade of 
character that scarcely deserves the name Christian. 
There is little in it of the manly struggle w^hich, 
with the grace of the Lord, develops strength of 
character. It is a grade of character called Chris- 
tian, because it is propped up for a time by a theory 
of salvation received at first " with joy," but with 
little besides joy. It is easy, in theory, to fly to 
the very gate of Paradise with nothing but the 
soul's very cheap delight. But let one fly heaven- 
ward on the impulse given him by victories over 
temptations on the ground. It is best for his life 
that there should not be too conspicuous alternating 
of groveling and glorying. Let rejoicing be mod- 
est till to the testimony of the Divine Spirit is 
added the testimony of his own spirit — the con- 
sciousness of victory over temptation, that increases 
the capital on which manhood does large religious 
business. Then, when tempted and victorious, he 
may take excursions to heaven for religious recre- 
ation. 



XIV. 

TRIAL. 

TEIALS are not joyous. A thorn in the flesh 
does not a particle of good. It is nothing but 
a sharp pain, unless the spirit gets something that 
shows itself above thorns — something that reveals 
the sufficiency of the grace of God through all the 
earthly stage of the journey of life, however beset 
with difficulties. 

With an extraordinary mission on earth, the 
first disciples of Christ passed through ordinary 
trials of the earthly life. Their enthusiasm was not 
a divorce from the ordinary life of mankind. 
Their contact with the divine in Christ did not 
dehumanize them. When they remembered that 
Jesus had said, " In the world ye shall have tribu- 
lation/' they were reminded tha.t, with all their in- 
spiration for a special divine purpose, with all the 
greatness of their divine mission, they were just 
like other men, subject to the trials of ordinary 
human life. 

One can not preach too much joy to a person who 
has good sense sufficient to discern something of the 
divine meaning of trial. Strong sense invariably 
repudiates the idea of doing a large business of 
religious joy on a small capital of patience and tribu- 



TRIAL. 97 

lation. A healthy-working Christian does not re- 
ceive from the Master for his daily wages, sky- 
rockets, which amuse for a moment, and then burn 
out for nothing. 

There are people who have found the ground- 
plan of heaven, and are trying their feet awhile be- 
fore they soar with wings as angels. They have 
almost graduated in the school of matter-of-fact 
trial on the ground. More joy, more heavenly 
glory to shine on earthly things, will do them re- 
ligious good. Perhaps they may now be trusted 
with more glory. Let the familiar house of wor- 
ship now shine in their eyes like a glorious temple. 
Let the wings of cherubim fan the altar where they 
kneel in the dust by the familiar railing. Let the old 
bell of the church ring out for them glad tidings, 
the very reverberation of happy singers in heaven. 

Trials are not to be regarded as the Lord's ex- 
periments in a converted soul, as if to discover 
something he did not already know. Trials are 
rather to make one know himself in some degree as 
the Lord knows him. Trials are divine processes, 
rather than divine experiments in the human soul. 
Christ led a blind man away from the crowd. He 
made no experiment; he knew exactly what he 
could do; he opened the man's eyes. God sends an 
affliction directly to its place. Men call it an af- 
fliction — nothing more, nothing less — until they rec- 
ognize it as a trial, and understand something of its 
divine meaning, and profit by its lesson. 

7 



98 TEE MASTER SOWER. 

If a man's conversion be no more than skin-deep, 
the scratch of a thorn will prove as effectual as an 
earthquake to open his eyes to the thinness of his 
peace, the superficiality of his joy, in what he im- 
agined to be the deep conversion of his soul. They 
are not earthquakes and hurricanes generally that 
reveal shallow conversions. Very few of the con- 
verts in a revival are immediately overtaken by 
dire calamities. The processes of trial are usually 
of the most ordinary description. Trial is usually 
the natural course of natural things crossing a 
Christian's path; sometimes when he is walking in 
a straight path, sometimes when he is walking in a 
crooked path. If a man learns nothing in an ordi- 
nary trial, we may safely assert that about all he re- 
ceived in an extraordinary revival was a second- 
hand presumption concerning the salvation of his 
soul, and that the character he wears is little better 
than shoddy. 

The Lord graciously prepares his children for 
" the inheritance of the saints in light." It is not 
enough merely to be born into the spiritual king- 
dom ; otherwise it would always be best to die with 
the first breath of heaven. After birth there must 
be growth; and along with growth there must be 
experience, and trial is necessary to experience. 
There is opportunity on earth for the inspiration of 
trial that makes of the child a man of God. There 
is a process of experience. God knows all things 
from the beginning; we know only by experience. 



TRIAL. 99 

If trials prove that a man's boasted conversion is 
superficial, then trials are not superfluous. Job 
came forth as gold from the fiery furnace of his 
trial. How many, with a far milder trial, show 
that there is no precious metal in them! They 
whine under the smart of a switch. There is noth- 
ing like "the ring of the right metal" under the 
ponderous stroke of the hammer. 

You have seen souls who imagine that a light, 
airy joy is a complete equipment for heaven. They 
imagine that a journey to the world beyond is a 
very easy, safe undertaking, "requiring no special 
preparation. You have seen these airy souls col- 
lapse like bubbles with a breath of trial. The re- 
ligious joy that has no acquaintance with patience, 
and the faith the trial of which worketh no patience, 
are not worth much. 

We worldly-wise mortals have many conceits 
about heaven. It is an office of trials to take these 
conceits out of us. Do we not sometimes look into 
heaven by moonlight? Do we not think that the 
Sun of righteousness is tame compared with the 
cheap exuberance of our fancy? We have studded 
the gates of heaven with pearls which cost us nothing. 
With dry eyes, we look through the pearly gates ajar. 
It is not just like looking through tears. You have 
seen saints ripe for heaven, looking heavenward 
through tears, yearning to be away, ready to go — 
all very different from the conceit of the recent 
convert before the Lord has given him any plain 



100 THE MASTER SOWER. 

prose of trial to read, before he has learned that in 
his circumstances his hurry to get to heaven is 
unbecoming. 

Have you not seen conceit about heaven nipped 
in the bud, when one, acting the part of Job's com- 
forter, had an argumentum ad hominem applied in 
the shape of a sharp trial that came like an unex- 
pected frost in June? Our conceits lead us into 
innumerable mistakes about the third heaven. Our 
trials often find us still on the ground, and more 
wedded to the ground than our vision of so many 
heavens, rising one above another, leads us to sup- 
pose concerning ourselves. The boisterousness of 
our conceit about our readiness to die has abated 
at the breath of a sickness that was not unto death. 
We have discovered in our trials that our fancy 
graces were only our conceits about the correctness 
of our creeds. We have not by the orthodoxy of 
our heads deceived the Lord in the matter of the 
unsoundness of our hearts. We have found our 
sublime theory of sanctification a very poor justifi- 
cation of our low practice in some cases. We have 
found our able demonstration of the resurrection 
an unreliable offset to our buried charities. We 
have been compelled in the storm to throw over- 
board some of the cargo which, in our conceit, we 
thought we could carry to the other shore better 
than a larger and stronger craft. A sharp trial 
has punctured the bombast of our prayers. We say 
"Our Father" more like real children of the 



TRIAL. 101 

Heavenly Father; we ask with more humble con- 
fidence ; we tell the Lord less, and ask him more, — 
and all this is infinitely better for us than all that 
we had conceitedly imagined. 

Trials uncover mistakes about salvation which 
the young convert makes in the flush of his joy. 
How shall he know all about his soul's conversion 
without being tried? It is better for him to strug- 
gle with some open difficulties, and come off victo- 
rious, than to be lulled into a false peace by con- 
cealed mistakes. There is a pleasure in the 
sensation of springing at once into the highest 
glory, ignoring the slow years of trial, which may 
not be comprehended in the first happy days of the 
Spirit's converting grace. We may learn to count 
some weary days in the time of trial before we 
enter upon the glorious eternity, the days of which 
are not counted. We read the figures on the mile- 
stones as we walk along the road, and think over 
the details of the journey. The journey, mile by 
mile, is not just what we had pictured at the outset. 
The details of the journey from earth to heaven 
modify the outlook of conversion. 

It is one thing to be saved from sin ; it is quite 
another thing to be exempt from trial. In the 
Lord's economy of grace there is the grace of trial 
as well as the grace of regeneration. Trials un- 
cover some things that the regeneration of a man's 
soul does not touch. A converted man's bitter ene- 
mies are not subdued and made tender in heart by 



102 THE MASTER SO WEE. 

the same transforming Divine Spirit that is present 
in the process of his soul's conversion. Natural 
difficulties, instead of being removed from one's 
pathway immediately after conversion, often become 
more conspicuous. Not infrequently the grace 
which we regarded as a sure talisman, we find to be 
a mark for sharpshooters. The trials of the Chris- 
tian serve to show us that we have something more 
to do than merely to drift into the permanently 
higher life — the kingdom of glory. 

You have heard of the " sifting of Satan." He 
is still in the business of sifting, though he now 
more frequently handles a much smaller sieve of 
petty persecutions than he did when martyrs sealed 
their testimony with their blood. Less than blood 
often tests in these days. When " persecution 
ariseth because of the word," who are they that 
stand firm? Not those whose joy springs up like 
the wheat in rocky soil but an inch deep, which 
turns pale yellow under the kindly rays of the sun. 
Their blessedness evaporates in the very face of the 
Savior's beatitude, " Blessed are they which are per- 
secuted for righteousness' sake." They did not bar- 
gain for that — they did not look from that mount of 
beatitudes into the upper kingdom. 

Discouraged by a sneer; conquered by a slight 
social ostracism; turned out of the way by the 
scratch of a brier; frightened by the bark of a 
poodle, — such things tell the sad story of failures 
at the very entrance of that kingdom of God at the 



TRIAL. 103 

» 

inauguration of which there were heroes who, 
" through faith, subdued kingdoms, wrought right- 
eousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of 
lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the 
edge of the sword, out of weakness were made 
strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the 
armies of the aliens; . . . had trial of cruel 
mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds 
and imprisonment; they were stoned, they were 
sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the 
edge of the sword;" and "who, for the joy that was 
set before them [like Jesus], endured the cross, de- 
spising the shame." 

Behold the cross which Christ endured ! You 
read in the light of this cross, salvation ; then, re- 
joice. You read in the light of this cross, if you 
put together aright the letters traced in blood, trial ; 
then, be patient. The cross on Calvary does not 
contradict the promise of the crown of life eternal. 
Only "be thou faithful" — reading aright all the 
significance of the cross — and the crown shall be 
thine. 



XV. 

PRAYING. 

FAITHFUL praying, in its relation to Christian 
fruitfulness of life, is putting on soil and dig- 
ging. The Lord, in his Parable of the Sower, de- 
clares that some precious seed of his truth falls in 
the thin soil on the rock, and, as soon as it springs 
up, it withers away, because it lacks moisture. 
Nevertheless can not the Lord do wonders in the 
soul of man? Will not miracles of diviue grace be 
performed in the soil of the human heart? Many 
a wretchedly poor soil might be fertilized and en- 
riched if the idea of praying were enlarged to take 
in the fullness of God's love, compassion, and 
gracious nearness, responsive to the trustful yearn- 
ing of the praying soul. 

Many a one troubled in spirit at the discovery 
that his first marked religious joy was evanescent, 
may yet learn that there is a praying that fixes in 
the soul the substance of permanent gladness. He 
may learn that there is a praying, with watching, 
that gently holds him back so that he enters not 
into temptation ; that soothes his spirit in trial ; 
that reconciles his spirit to the discipline of suffer- 
ing; that renews and develops his strength. He 
may learn that through praying theEe is a laying on 
104 



PRAYING. 105 

of successive experiences that enrich the poor soil. 
The rocks are pulverized; here and there is an 
oasis in the desert; there is something at least of 
the beauty of the season of blossoming, with the 
promise of fruit-bearing. 

We think that God looks not unkindly on buds 
and blossoms, and loves the praying of a poor soul 
that greatly needs transplanting in a richer soil, 
and, in his gracious providence, looks out many a 
richer spot of earth for such a soul, intensely seek- 
ing a favorable place for vigorous growth. 

Praying must dig deeper than the superficial re- 
joicing that is merely selfish and short-sighted; 
must bring the lacked moisture from heaven ; 
must entreat; and, entreating, it may command the 
dews of heaven. 

Away with the dry, technical divisions of prayer ! 
The soul, in its approaches to the living God, is not 
a dead thing to be dissected. It is alive in its 
consciousness of spiritual w T ants. It feels its im- 
mortality in its thirst for God. When you attempt 
to deal out a portion of prayer for saint, a portion 
for sinner, be careful that you do not kneel under 
skies that yield no moisture. After you have di- 
vided prayer in general into " public, private, fam- 
ily," and so on, and after you have settled the 
order of "praise, petition, confession," in the single 
prayer you may say : " Lord, I have done all that 
I can logically do." Praise of God, all cut and 
dried, is too often, alas ! the conceit of self-worship. 



106 THE MASTER SOWER. 

Making a list of confessions of sin, merely for the 
sake of a proper order of petitions in the logically 
arranged prayer, is a performance too cool and de- 
liberate in the sight of Him who has all " our secret 
sins in the light of his countenance." 

It is well said that " prayer is the Christian's 
vital breath." Now if, with the first breath of the 
atmosphere of heaven, one gets a notion that his 
habit of praying must enter into a certain routine 
of laborious duty; that he must say his regular 
prayers, with just so much measured praise of God, 
just so many items of confession, just so much 
thanksgiving for the common blessings of life, just 
so much measured petition in the line of duty 
rather than in the line of spiritual yearning, — he 
gets a wrong idea of Christian life, to begin with* 
After the first breath of heaven, such a one, with 
such an idea of prayer, soon loses all practical in- 
terest in real Christian life. 

One whose praying is like the measured, soulless 
movement of clock-work can make no sense of 
praying without words. Well, let us say, there is 
no sense in it; it is the act of the voiceless spirit 
rising immeasurably above time and sense. You 
have felt your soul inexpressibly, unspeakably 
thirsting for God. No word that you uttered in 
the prayer of words satisfied your profound con- 
sciousness of spiritual want. You knew that the 
Divine Spirit was searching the depths of your, 
consciousness. You felt that God understood your 



PEAYINO. 107 

wants to which you could give no familiar earthly 
names. Your spirit has been hushed in adoration. 
You could not well make a prayer of words; yet 
your soul was praying. Then to have used all the 
vocabulary that you had ever learned would have 
spoiled, would have fallen short of the sacred quality 
of your devotion; would have been sacrilegious; 
would have pained you with a sense of drifting 
away from the sacred presence of the Divine One, 
saying without words: a Be still, and know that I 
am God." 

Joy, sorrow, hope, trust, adoration — all have 
their silent phases. They all lie far back of words. 
Expressive silence is often the soul's recognition of 
the meaning of the injunction, "Let all the earth 
fear the Lord ; let all the inhabitants of the world 
stand in awe of him!" There are times for each 
one of these experiences — joy, sorrow, hope, trust, 
adoration, fear, love — to be voiced for the hearing 
of our ears; but he has not the fullness of Christian 
experience who can express it all in words. The 
experience that is principally loquacious is not the 
deepest and the richest of the Christian life. There 
is an experience that fails when words fail, and 
there is a praying that ceases when sounds cease; 
but the one is not the highest experience, nor the 
other the deepest praying. 

Who can with words "pray without ceasing?" 
Yet there are depths of the soul wherein the spirit 
of prayer may abide, uninterrupted by all the 



108 THE MASTER SOWER. 

surface agitation of the world. Within this deep 
spirit of prayer there is an undercurrent of spiritual 
rejoicing that is not for a brief season, but for ever- 
more. It is a rejoicing that whispers to us in pain, 
that is associated w T ith implicit trust in God, and 
looks over mountains of difficulty, and that is ac- 
cepted of God as the voice of supplication. 

Let the soul be draw r n by the Divine Spirit up into 
an atmosphere of prayer where breathing — living — 
is as praying. Let Christian cheerfulness be more 
steadily the soul's signal of thanksgiving to God. 
Let the soul's abhorrence of sin be its most ex- 
pressive deprecation of sin. Let the Christian life 
itself be a psalm of praise to God. Let mercy, love, 
and trust, breathing within the soul, be so many 
phases of supplication to the All-merciful, the All- 
loving, the All-faithful, who will listen to our 
words — and interpret them — as he listened to the 
psalmist's words : " Hear the voice of my supplica- 
tion when I cry unto thee, when I lift my hands 
toward thy holy oracle. Let the words of my mouth 
and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy 
sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer !" 

The Savior's intimate association of watching 
and praying is often entirely overlooked. It is a 
literal watching that is required in the formation of 
exact Christian character, that will face difficulties 
and danger. Figures of danger in the distance, 
storms at sea, the devil's pickets and w 7 atch-towers, 
are well enough as figures of speech, but they are 



PRAYING. 109 

valueless if they do not lead to literal watching. 
There are prayers that only play around the real 
dangers that beset the Christian life. There are 
prayers that luxuriate in the green pastures of the 
heavenly Canaan, while well-known dangers are care- 
lessly ignored instead of being practically avoided. 

Can you bear to think of all this temporal life 
as one long vigil? Has not an hour sometimes 
seemed very long w T hen your eyes were heavy with 
watching? Can there be any comparatively easy 
state of mind that may be called perpetual vigi- 
lance ? Yes, there is a praying that is a looking 
out from the darkness where moral dangers lurk, to 
where clear light is shining. Prayerfulness is watch- 
fulness ; watchfulness is prayerfulness. The soul in 
w^hich the spirit of prayer dwells, is the soul on 
guard. There are critical times when, watching 
ever so much, as one thinks, he enters into tempta- 
tion because he is prayerless. There are times 
when, praying ever so much, as one thinks, he 
enters into temptation because he is not watching. 

There are just as many opportunities about one 
when he is not praying as there are when he is 
praying; but he sees better when he is praying. 
O for the praying that translates one into a new 
world of opportunities ; that reveals the horses and 
chariots of the Lord ready to help; that shows us 
paths shunned by unsanctified ambitions, wherein 
we may walk, if we will, and find safety and spirit- 
ual peace ! 



110 THE MASTER SOWER. 

Have you never listened to a merely nominal 
Christian's prayer which gave you a sensation as if 
God and heaven were drifting far away, and you 
fell to thinking of the prayer as you might think of 
any material thing not too sacred to handle ? You 
recognized the smack of secular comfort in the fa- 
miliar " Lord, we thank thee that it is as well with 
us as it is." There was a tone — or absence of tone — 
in the " Bless the sick and the needy, the world 
over," that led you to suspect that the suppliant was 
not acquainted with any such nearer home. You 
could fancy that he had taken the gospel between 
his teeth, but was determined not to swallow it. 

His praise was others' gold, hammered out for the 
gilding of his prayer — nothing in it of original con- 
ception of the Heavenly Father. His confessions 
were the formal statement of the " sins of omission " 
of one who was making the most of being saved 
by grace, while a passing, general reference to " sins 
of commission" was thrown in for the sake of 
euphony — nothing of original, heartfelt regret in 
all the confessions. Then came the " amen," which 
signified — if it signified anything — that the main 
object of a prayer from the beginning is to reach 
the other end — the "finis " — as if one said, " I have 
said my prayer; the Lord is dismissed." 

There is a clear distinction between earnestness 
and vociferousness in prayer. We need the spirit 
of prayer that refreshes the soul; not that which 
exhausts. Prayer is not to be numbered among 



PRAYING. Ill 

the " works " of which evangelical Christians speak 
so disparagingly (and properly, too) when works 
are pushed into competition with trust in the Re- 
deemer. Prayer is the breathing of trust in the 
Lord. It is the gracious privilege of the Christian 
who has the spirit of obedience ; it is the soul's rest 
and recreation in the midst of work. A whispered 
word may strike to the heart a deeper dread than 
the crash of thunder. The still, small voice of God 
may speak to the soul engaged in voiceless prayer, 
sublimer things than the roaring tornado, the earth- 
quake, or the -fire may tell. 

When the Lord invites you into your closet to 
pray, does he point out that you are to leave the 
door wide open, that your voice may make procla- 
mation to all in the house that you are engaged in 
secret prayer? Is there such confusion in your 
mind concerning vociferousness and earnestness that 
you know nothing of earnestness in solitude? You 
are a failure at the start, with all your vehemence, 
if you can not pray alone. Many a sinful human 
creature has his most earnest spiritual business to 
transact alone with the Lord. A human ear at the 
keyhole of his closet-door would cause his voice 
sometimes to sink to a whisper, if he is in deep 
earnest. 

There are prayers which go up into the air like 
balloons, to swell and drift and collapse. We have 
not greatly wondered at the failures in the very 
beginning of a rich promise of Christian life, when 



112 THE MASTER SOWER. 

we have considered the aimlessness of first prayers; 
the swelling of the soul with a gaseous joy; the 
flying to heaven hooked to the bottom of high- 
sounding prayers. 

Praying for the true life of the soul ought to 
have precedence of the praying for the bliss of 
heaven. Not that heavenly bliss is not infinitely 
desirable, but the desire for heaven must needs be 
nourished by a life of the soul on earth. Heaven 
should appear as the fit place for the consummation 
of life in Christ. Earth should appear as the 
place where it is God's will and pleasure to have 
the beginning of a spiritual and religious life to 
emerge from the natural life — to strike its roots in 
earthly soil, watered by divine grace, and growing 
heavenward. 

What capabilities, what possibilities of life are 
hidden away in the depths of our being! What in- 
ducements there are to pray ! Lord, gently remove 
the folds of this earthly life ; let us be drawn close 
to Christ's unearthliness; teach us the high signifi- 
cance of living on earth; suspend thy judgment 
while we pray and struggle and trust for the life 
that is now unfolding within our spiritual nature, 
while we talk with thee, and while we listen to the 
Son of God ! 



XVI. 

GROWING. 

WE naturally expect a healthy child to grow. 
If there is no perceptible growth of the 
body in the course of a year, we suspect a freak ot 
nature interfering with the development of phys- 
ical manhood. AVhen the years of boyhood or 
girlhood have passed, and the child grows no larger, 
we get tired of the fiction when it is said, " This is 
a boy," or "This is a girl." The ball or the doll is 
laid aside; the child desires no longer to play with 
these literal playthings. There is desire to stand, 
shoulder to shoulder, with men and women in the 
more serious business of life. 

Now, there can be no reasonable objection to a 
proper childhood of Christian life — the beginning 
of Christian life; the initial unfolding of the Chris- 
tian character on earth; religious playfulness; the in- 
nocent misconceptions of the beginning; the shrink- 
ing from solid work; the over-fondness for sweet- 
meats, — as compared with that maturity of Chris- 
tian experience and character to which some attain, 
notwithstanding their falling short of absolute per- 
fection. There are some who do not die in the 
infancy of their Christian life. They live to grow. 
There is a childhood of Christian life w T hich must, 

8 113 



1 1 4 THE M. I S TEE SO] VER 

in the very nature and order of life, precede Chris- 
tian manhood. It is the unnatural, the abnormal 
childhood, in which there is no growth, no grada- 
tion of playing, do progressing from smaller to 
larger playthings, no dawning of the idea or the 
desire ot* being a man or a woman, that disappoints 
the expectation of thoughtful Christians: for they 
are deeply interested in the advancement of the Re- 
deemer's kingdom, and this advancement is certainly 
made along the line of growth from childhood to 
manhood of Christian experience, 

A poet says, " A babe in glory is a babe for- 
ever." Be that as it may in the poet's conception 
of glorified babyhood, the "babe in Christ" here 
on earth, that holds otit no promise of being any- 
thing more than a babe; that frets at twenty years 
just as it fretted at twenty days: that lies puling 
in the arms of its nursing-mother, the Church, 
quieted only with pretty spiritual songs, and nursery 
rhymes, and rattle-boxes, and such things, — eeases 
to be pleasing, and cries for pity. No, no! the 
babe in Christ is interesting, not because we con- 
ceive that it is to be a babe forever, but because we 
conceive the possibility of its being forever some- 
thing more than a baby. 

Why should there not be in the Christian eon- 
version of a soul the birth of a distinct desire to 
grow? Why should we not clearly see that this 
conversion is but the beginning of a life? The 
sun in springtime says to the fruit-tree, "Grow, and 



GROWING. 115 

bear fruit ;" the Sun of righteousness says to the 
soul, "Grow, and bear fruit." 

There are many things in the conversion of a 
soul analogous to natural infancy and natural child- 
hood, but not evervthincr. The kingdom of nature 
does not completely illustrate the kingdom of di- 
vine grace. A babe has no idea of growing. A 
man who has just entered the kingdom of Christ 
is called a "babe in Christ," but he may have joy 
in the thought of going on. He is a babe in that 
he has commenced a life; he is a child in his new 
recognition of the Fatherhood of God. 

It may be that just now some twists in our moral 
nature are unavoidable. We are not just as sound 
at the root as that noble tree, which seems to pray, 
lifting its symmetrical arms toward heaven. But 
we need not sit under that tree — one of God's 
object-lessons for our study — and approve moral 
monstrosities. We know that thousands claim to 
have been " born again " who only serve to illus- 
trate spiritual deformity. Have you not seen peo- 
ple start out in what they call a religious life, in a 
direction in which you, in all your patient thinking 
about heaven, could see them only inevitably turned 
back? Certainly, the more they grow in that di- 
rection, the greater monstrosities they would be in 
heaven. 

The remarkable phenomena produced by pseudo- 
religious sensations, we look upon as interfering 
with the symmetrical growing of the soul in the 



116 THE MASTER SO WER. 

genuine grace of God. Dependence on sensations 
is just so much deficiency of faith in the Son of 
God. A steady, intelligent faith in Christ clears 
the way for one to grow from earth to heaven. The 
moment he demands a sensation to confirm his faith, 
he asks for that which is inconsistent with faith, 
which has nothing to do with faith. In the abun- 
dance of sensations there is interference with the 
soul's symmetrical growth in grace. Right growth 
in grace does not cast discredit on divine grace. 

We see in the beginning of a Christian life much 
that resembles the swelling of buds on our fruit- 
trees in spring-time, the season of budding. The 
budding is a promise of growing far enough to 
produce substantial fruit. We would be astonished 
to see ripe fruit hanging on the tree where there 
had been no buds. We see nature is full of grow- 
ing things. It would strike us as most unnatural 
to see many things at once reach perfection, after 
their kind, without any process of growing. 

It appears, according to the Lord's method of 
dealing with us, that he regards experience as one 
of the best things that he, in his providence, can 
give us human creatures on the earth where he has 
placed us. We glibly talk of religious experience. 
We do not seem to value this religious experience 
as the Lord values it for us. We sometimes talk 
largely and positively about a perfect religious ex- 
perience, as if it had nothing on earth to do with 
what we may term our earthly life-impression — the 



GROWING. 117 

impression made in our life by the innumerable 
things of earth that we see, hear, and touch. 

In fact, processes of growing are blended in our 
lives. The child of God by grace — by new spiritual 
birth — and the child of nature grow together in the 
same person. We do not say that every impression 
in the life of the child of nature marks him a failure 
as to the grace of God, an alien from the kingdom 
of divine grace ; but we do say that he is to be re- 
garded as a failure at the start and from the start, 
if he commence with the grace of God that makes 
him glad, and does not soon grow far enough to 
produce some substantial fruit of grace in whatever 
circumstances of natural life he may be placed. 

If God designs and knows that a man is yet to 
live fifty years on earth, certainly some views of 
heaven are reserved to be given through experience, 
both of divine grace — purely spiritual and re- 
ligious — and experience of the things that make up 
the natural and ordinary part of life. There is a 
perfection, or maturity, that can come only through 
growing. It is that maturity for which God, in his 
providence, allows the experience of years on earth. 

The term " grace " in the mouths of many sin- 
cere people is of most vague significance. It sug- 
gests to our minds a variety of spiritual atmos- 
pheres and spiritual moods. Xothing is definitely 
settled in our minds when we hear some people 
talk very positively of " growing in grace." We 
must first know what they mean by " grace." 



118 THE MAS TER SO WEE. 

What is their idea of a beginning of "grace?" 
What conception of growing have they? What 
will be the practical result of their going on, ever 
so far, in their style of grace? Will their style of 
spirituality become more intense only to see nothing 
but gracelessness in any modification of their style ? 
What is the use in their parading their " wonder- 
ful" growth in grace before the eyes of one of re- 
fined spiritual perception, to whom the quality, the 
tone, the flavor of their grace are offensive; who 
perceives that the more they have of what they call 
grace, the less to the credit of the gospel of Christ? 
Why should they persist in annoying people with 
their theory while there is nothing in the fact of 
their state of grace, nor in their practice, to con- 
vince men that it is of rare heavenliness? 

" Grace," in the view of some people, is a certain 
peculiar feeling or sensation which rises and falls 
like the mercury in a thermometer. When it rises 
to a certain point, which may be termed blood-heat, 
Ave hear: " I feel that I am growing in grace." We 
hear this at every recurrence of that same state of 
feeling. We hear it repeated as if there were no va- 
riety of the phases of divine grace, no blending of 
a multitude of Christian feelings in the one habit of 
feeling of the growing man — growing as every man 
in some degree may grow who has any inwrought 
sense of the duty of Christian thinking. 

The Spirit of Christ can not be attained by any 
amount of that knowledge which, for distinction, is 



GROWING. 119 

termed knowledge of this world. No soul that has 
imbibed the spirit of the gospel of Christ will dis- 
pute the insufficiency of unsanctified knowledge; 
yet w 7 e fear that there is much absurd talking about 
growth in grace which takes but little account, or 
no account, of corresponding growth in knowledge. 
Of course we do not refer to merely technical 
knowledge; w T e do not refer to the merely igno- 
rant man — for who is not ignorant? — but to the 
ignorant man stereotyped, who makes no appre- 
ciable natural growth, while he talks incessantly, 
loudly, aimlessly, of growth in grace. 

The man who has no idea of religious educa- 
tion — the drawing out and enlarging of the soul 
through Christianly religious experience — has a 
vague notion of being filled with the grace of 
God — something almost material oozing from ma- 
terial means of grace, put into him in greater and 
greater measure while the man grows no larger. 
There is no clear distinction in his mind between 
gross feeding and growing. He makes the sad 
mistake of accepting the activity of his lowest 
faculties in religion as conclusive evidence of a 
larger growth than in the case of others, whose 
higher faculties have received a gentler baptism of 
the Divine Spirit. 

Let Christian conversion be regarded more in 
the light of means to an end. Let better Christian 
thinking be encouraged, instead of silly sensations 
in the name of religion. Let revivals still reveal 



120 THE MASTER SOWER. 

glorious opportunities for starting in earnest relig- 
ious life, and uncover means of growing — which 
are implied in means of divine grace — unnoticed in 
the midst of life's sordid cares and engrossing sin- 
ful pleasures. Let us seek the things which con- 
tain the glowing signs of growing, wherein we read 
the promises of successful life in Christ. 



XVII. 

CARES. 

THERE is a phase of worldly-mindedness that 
is impervious to the Spirit of Christ, and mis- 
apprehends the gospel. There is a phase of worldly- 
mindedness modified by a partial acceptance of the 
gospel, giving rise to a type of character — part re- 
ligious and part worldly — which misrepresents the 
gospel of Christ. 

In his Parable of the Sower, the Savior speaks 
of a class of persons who fail to represent faith- 
fully the heavenly character of his gospel, when he 
speaks of those who are "choked with the cares, 
riches, and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit 
to perfection." These are a class in the Savior's 
description distinct from those who fail through 
error concerning Christian joy. They are, indeed, 
those who need more joy in the Holy Spirit. 
They are as a people walking through a dry and 
thirsty land, where no water is. They fail to use 
obvious means of divine grace, and the kingdom of 
grace becomes as a desert to their souls; the beauty 
of heavenly character fades; the strength of relig- 
ious purpose decays. 

There are a multitude of worldly cares, which 
need not crowd from the heart the blessings of the 

121 



122 THE MASTER SOWER. 

gospel. The Son of God can walk upon the ruf- 
fled waters; the child of God may hear the voice 
of divine "good cheer" in the midst of a boister- 
ous sea of temporal cares. If the Lord had not 
come to give us some religious care, w 7 ould we not 
feel a burden of anxiety that no temporal busying 
could relieve? Better, then, to have some care for 
eternal things. Better for us to look out over our 
sea of cares, and see, and "be not afraid" of Him 
who comes to care for our souls. 

The soul of an earnest man is often agitated in 
the search for religious truth which he would have 
to enter into his character for eternity. After the 
agitation of earnest seeking, the truth itself often 
comes to one's soal like a "still small voice" di- 
vine, that hushes his human cries. He recognizes 
it as a peaceful answer to his anxieties. It tells 
him at last that the soul which is capable of anx- 
iety to know eternal, divine truth, may rise above 
all the power of temporal cares to spoil the immor- 
tal spirit. 

Anxious care for one's own soul is not the care 
that makes shipwreck of one's faith in Christ. It 
is not, strictly speaking, one of the "cares of this 
world." It is commendable forethought of the 
world to come. It is a striving for mastery over 
merely worldly cares ; a struggling to prevent their 
ingulfing the soul; a protest against being engrossed 
by the things which one, in some inferior measure, 
may care for in time. 



CARES. 123 

There are " cares of this world" which do not 
interfere with the claims of Christ, while they af- 
ford the fairest field for the formation of the relig- 
ious character, which, instead of dehumanizing the 
man, blends the Spirit of Christ with the instincts 
of better manhood. 

Jesus, a guest at the wedding in Cana of Gali- 
lee — Jesus, the Son of God, the representative, the 
manifestation of God's good-will and pleasure con- 
cerning the children of men — stands at the threshold 
of human society on earth, the family, the " unit of 
society." He asks by his presence to sanctify the 
cares of the family ; and in asking that, he asks to 
be a recognized, loved, and honored Divine pres- 
ence in the various relations of earthly human so- 
ciety, with all their products of cares as well as 
of joys. 

It was not necessary for one to forget Christ 
when he stood at the altar and vowed to care for 
one whom he loved with a love the fondest thrill- 
ing of which stirred no breath of jealousy in heaven. 
The care of a family forces upon him a multitude 
of anxieties. He may think that he could have 
been a better Christian without these anxieties. In 
such a case he is not the one to talk of manifesting 
sterling Christian qualities. Is it manly to say, " I 
could be a better Christian without my wife and 
children?" If he can make an offering of his life 
to Christ only on the hypothesis of a sacrifice of his 
family, his offering is an insult to the Savior, who 



124 THE MASTER SOWER. 

made a self-sacrifice for him. His fretfulness in such 
a case is pusillanimity. 

The injunction to keep the heart with all dili- 
gence, does not exclude all care for the mental basis 
of the affections that are baptized with the Spirit of 
Christ. The gospel does not exhort us to neglect 
the foundation of intelligent love. A multitude of 
temporal ideas assert their right of place in the 
growing mind of a citizen of this lower world. 
Must he therefore ignore the message from heaven, 
and banish from his mind all care for the divine 
idea of eternal life? Why should not the divine 
idea glow in his mind? The heart need not go 
back and hide itself away from God because the in- 
tellect is going forward. The intellect may nurse 
its own peculiar cares, and perpetually change with 
its discoveries, w T hile the renewed heart remains 
changeless in its devotion to the divine life revealed 
in Christ. 

There have been skeptics who have made a life- 
long effort to repudiate their early religious educa- 
tion, and to forget the impressions once made in the 
heart by the Son of God. They have been reluctant 
witnesses of the spiritual force of the divine life in 
Christ. They have failed to outlive that life, and 
have sometimes yielded at last, conquered by the di- 
vine love that would not give them up. 

The real Christ is often crowded from the heart 
while one goes on in the lifeless performance of ex- 
ternal duties enjoined by the letter of the gospel as 



CARES. 125 

distinguished from the spirit. A ceremonial care- 
fulness may go along with a spiritual carelessness. 
Men often give to the world their capacity for car- 
ing ; and the world, in return, gives them care that 
interferes with their prospect of heaven, and cheats 
them with false representations of the value of their 
" means of grace ;" for that is no means of grace, 
after all, which is used in such a way as to end in 
spiritual lifelessness. 

If a man's soul is given over to the acquisition 
of worldly things that predominate and stamp their 
image in the mind, at the same time expelling the 
Christ-presence, he will either cease to be Christian 
by failing in every essential requirement of the 
Christian life, or he will attempt a compromise by 
some heartless performance of that class of nominal 
duties which interfere the least with the essentially 
worldly determination of his mind. He goes to 
church on Sunday; he lends his outward ear to the 
sermon ; but his heart does not " hear what the Spirit 
saith." Though he has for years given his soul to 
the most sordid claims of the world, he can, per- 
haps, tell when he "gave his heart to the Lord;" 
but he does not tell how he has taken back the gift. 

Intelligent faith in Christ sanctifies the necessary 
cares of the lower life; reveals their nobler mean- 
ing; assigns their limitations; makes them, in the 
case of a sincere Christian, consistent with the 
steady life he has in Christ. True, intelligent faith 
rebukes the cares that dispute with Christ. It is 



126 THE MASTER SO WEE. 

not a spiritual legerdemain by which a predomi- 
nantly worldly soul occasionally shuffles a heaven 
into view. 

Cain, excusing his carelessness of his brother's 
blood, asked, "Am I my brother's keeper?'' In 
modern times there are people willing to attend to 
the details of the business of their brethren as an ex- 
cuse for neglecting their own business, to the injury 
of their own souls. They are willing to give their 
spiritual life in their care for the business of others, 
not as a matter of conscience, but as a matter of 
meddlesomeness. They waste their capital in a 
busy-ness (not to say business) that does not add to 
the nobility of their sympathy, and call it relig- 
ious business. There are men and women in the 
Churches from whose minds nearly every sweet 
principle of the gospel has been expelled by a 
fussiness that degrades the dignity of the Christian 
character, and has long since overstepped the legiti- 
mate province of a Christian's wholesome influence 
in society. 

Many men are now living in their narrow past, in 
which they lived too long with little thought of the 
future. Some lives are contracting, instead of ex- 
panding. Their horizon closes around a few habits, 
a few dogmatic opinions, a few selfish sympathies. 
We often see people whose lives are palpably con- 
tracting, ever and anon puffed up with " salva- 
tion." Christian salvation is not mere sentiment, 
that glows regardless of one's practice of Christian 



CARES. 127 

virtues. The gospel of Christ is full of germs of 
religious truth which a man may take to his heart 
to the end that, with their growing in his spiritual 
nature, he may attain unto the religious largeuess of 
soul contemplated by the great soul of the Re- 
deemer. 

The cares which are permitted to dwarf the soul 
are rebuked by the Great Savior, as well they may 
be, by Him who is in divine sympathy with that 
true greatness of soul which bears the stamp of his 
grace toward this fallen world. If a soul is filled 
with the cares of this world, it has, in that measure, 
failed in the Christian life. There have been, in- 
deed, great souls that were careworn. Men have 
done noble Christian service for humanity, and 
have been patient and habitually cheerful, with no 
less daily cares than those which other men have 
permitted to dwarf their souls, and render them 
unproductive, save in fretfulness, in the midst of 
their petty cares. 

The sanctification which the gospel proposes for 
man elevates the soul above earth, and is enlarge- 
ment as w T ell as purification of soul. The Lord 
Jesus Christ came to earth, not to save men in 
their littleness and to seal them in their littleness 
for heaven, but rather, by the inspiration of his 
great truths and the operation of his Spirit, to en- 
large the souls of believing men. There is an 
earthliness of spirit that is littleness, that stunts the 
soul, and expels Christ's large thoughts; and 



1 28 THE MASTER SO WE& 

though formal praying, attending Church, taking 
the sacraments, learning the Creeds, go on, the man 
posssessed with a legion of cares may as well be pos- 
sessed with a "legion of devils," so far as a large 
spiritual life is concerned. 

All progress in the Christian life is frequently 
arrested, and all religious comfort is dissipated, by 
one's entanglement in his own web of unnecessary 
and unreal anxieties, which his imagination spins. 
What remedy can the gospel be for imaginary 
cares, if the mind persist in dwelling amidst fic- 
titious anxieties? Must the Spirit of Christ be 
adjusted to unreal life? Does the Divine Spirit 
follow the bent of inclination of a hypochondriac, 
or of one who incessantly weaves the substance of 
his imagination into forms of unreasonable, unreal 
wants? Surely not. Such a one must sensibly 
clear the way for advancement in real Christian 
life; must employ all the natural sense he possesses 
in chasing away the bugbears of his imagination ; 
must go back to real cares, and advance from them, 
lie can never build a real, permanent character on 
fiction. He thinks the Lord should pass by matter- 
of-fact men, in their visible, tangible cares, to com- 
fort him by special enactment. His progress in 
Christian life is arrested because he ceases to live 
within the sphere of Christian reality. His relig- 
ious comfort is dissipated because he ceases to trust 
Cod in the real, necessary, inevitable cares of life, 



CARES. 129 

and weaves a fabric of anxiety which appears sub- 
stantial only in the eyes of his imagination. 

Careworn and ChrisUeBs — that tells the sad story 
of many a failure, after a fair start in the Christian 
life, — the pleasant flavor of the temporal life, and 
the inspiration of the divine, failing together; in 
many instances, inordinate anxiety about little 
things resulting in earelessness about great things; 
the mention of religion an occasion for an out- 
burst of fretfulness, or of indignation, at the thought 
of adding Christ to the list of cares; the failure to 
comprehend the spirit of the gospel, designed to 
underlie — as the current of a life moving heaven- 
ward — all that the same God who gave us the gos- 
pel and our being in these circumstances, permits 
to attach to our individuality and to agitate our souls 
on earth. 



XVIII. 

RICHES. 

THE gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ does not 
indiscriminately pronounce a benediction on 
shiftless poverty and a malediction on riches hon- 
estly accumulated and generously employed; but 
there are many who have much of this material 
world, and are slow to perceive that their life does 
not consist in the abundance of material things 
which they possess. Rich lives — lives of men, gen- 
erous, spiritually-minded, exhibiting all Christian 
graces in the midst of steady and abundant worldly 
prosperity — are in demand to convince the quer- 
ulous, who doubt that there can be any way of se- 
curing worldly comfort consistently with the spirit- 
ual blessings which the gospel proposes for men in 
this life. 

There are those who started years ago to serve 
the Lord, who have prospered in the world, and 
failed in the gospel. They have frittered away 
their spiritual life in scraping together the things 
which are worth less than that life. They are 
victims of inordinate desire for mean things as 
compared with that which the Lord has to give 
the soul. 

It is not possessing, but being possessed, by the 
130 



RICHES. 131 

inordinate passion for wealth, that called forth the 
hard saying of Christ, "It is easier for a camel to 
go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man 
to enter the kingdom of God." Is he who said 
that to be regarded as a hard, implacable Master? 
Are we not rather to feel that here is one who 
thoroughly comprehends the right spirit of the 
kingdom of heaven ? He shuts the door of heaven 
in the face of no man, poor in spirit, who yearns 
for a life richer in love and moral purity, and 
stronger in faith. He closes his gracious heart 
against no one who is not alreadv satisfied with his 
possessions, and who has not given over his whole 
soul to material possessions. 

A rich oicWs spiritual regeneration may be ef- 
fected without his becoming poor, just as a poor 
man's regeneration may be effected without his be- 
coming rich; yet poverty might test the rich man, 
and riches might test the poor man. There is a 
snare in riches; there is a snare in poverty. In 
either snare a man's spiritual life may be entangled 
and choked. Is a man possessed by the merely 
worldly idea of wealth? Does the idea roil him? 
Does he expect to get all things by his money? 
Does he care for but little, if anything, more than 
that which money gets? How can he sympathize 
with the heavenliness of the Lord Jesus Christ? 
How can he, without a reconstruction of ideas, enter 
Christ's kingdom ? It is impossible except, as the 
Savior intimates, with divine help. Then if, with 



132 THE MASTER SOWER. 

divine help, he faithfully enters the Redeemer's 
kindgom, he is no longer the "rich man" of whom 
Christ speaks in the hard saying; for the Lord no 
more says "rich man" without discrimination than 
he says "poor man" without discrimination. 

" Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal 
life?" The person who addressed this question to 
Christ was an honest Israelite, and a man of great 
wealth and influence. It is evident that this man 
expected the great Prophet to pass favorable judg- 
ment upon his character. Could he not stand a 
fair examination as to various points of social mo- 
rality ? Had he not kept these things from his youth 
up ? He may not have been a man very liberal with 
his riches — not very generous ; but he had not com- 
mitted adultery; he had not murdered; he had not 
been a thief; he had not borne false witness; he 
had not dishonored his parents. Excellent nega- 
tions for temporal society ! But temporal society is 
not all; the question is concerning "eternal life." 
The real import of the man's question might be ex- 
pressed thus: "What shall I do more to inherit 
eternal life? Can the good Master mean any more 
than I have done, any more than I am ?" It was 
an instance of deep penetration of spirit and of life 
in the peculiar case of this man when Christ said to 
him: "Yet lackest thou one thing; sell all that 
thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou 
shalt have treasure in heaven ; and come, follow 
me." There is reason to believe that he was called 



RICHES. 133 

to be an apostle of the Son of God. If he had ac- 
cepted the call, his name might have been associ- 
ated for all time with the name of Paul. The 
Savior tested him in a peculiar manner. The test 
reveals the possibility of a religious failure at a crit- 
ical moment, and how riches, not less than poverty — 
perhaps in many instances not more — may stand in 
the way of opportunity. 

The gospel confronts on his own ground the 
rich man who is not spiritually-minded, who is 
heedless of opportunity for the advancement of his 
higher nature. The Christ is not to be blamed if 
fretful poor men, enviously thriftless men, shift the 
ground of complaint against rich men, and pour 
upon unoffending riches the animadversion which 
the gospel deservedly pronounces upon gross and 
obstinate uuspirituality. 

The Parable of the Sower is an illustrative pre- 
diction. It is true that Christ predicts that riches 
will expel from many a heart the seed of religious 
truth. The very quietness and brevity of the pre- 
diction in the parable indicate not the violence of 
gross wickedness so much as the gradual displacing 
(often in the process of growing rich) of that Di- 
vine Spirit which holds the mind in sympathy with 
heaven. It is not crime alone, not cruel inhu- 
manity, that renders the soul unfit for the higher 
heavenly life. It is the abuse of this world that 
grieves the heart of Jesus. It is debasing poverty 
of soul that he sees; and, seeing that, and lament- 



134 THE MASTER SOWER. 

ing as the Son of God can lament, he reproves the 
man, poor with all his possessions, who might be 
" rich toward God" with more attention to God's 
wealth-giving Word. 

Behold the Savior, " meek and lowly in heart," 
indignantly driving the traders from the holy temple. 
There they were converting God's house of prayer 
into a market-place, profiting by the sacrifices of re- 
ligion. This Son of David rebukes the inordinate 
propensity of the children of Abraham, now dis- 
persed among the Gentiles, given over to the bond- 
age of bargaining. The Son of God could see in 
the merchants, buying and selling in the temple, the 
outcropping of peculiar Jewish degradation that was 
to sink the Jewish people below the horizon of that 
Messianic kingdom the spiritual glory and power of 
which the ancient prophets had foreseen and gladly 
declared. Alas! that God's peculiar people should 
go forth into the world and among the nations to 
offend by that abject spirit of bargaining which pro- 
fanes the soul even as it profaned the temple of old ! 

Jesus, with his wonderful works, his wonderful 
doctrines, his transcendent life — pure, beautiful, and 
true — had made some impression for good on the 
character of Judas Iscariot; but Judas became a 
traitor to the kingdom of God notwithstanding 
that impression. He sold the Christ, and all of 
the Spirit of Christ that he had received vanished 
from his soul. When the Master refers to the fatal 
work of covetousness, we think of the fate of 



RICHES. 135 

Judas. We think it dangerous to dally with 
pieces of silver, with the thought of betraying the 
principles that are above and beyond all price. It 
is shameful for a follower of Christ to hesitate 
between money and the principles of the Christian 
religion. 

The class of people under consideration started 
fair in Christian life. It was the genuine seed of 
Christ-truth that fell into their hearts. Noble 
purposes sprang up in their hearts. Their affec- 
tions w T ere transformed. They pleased their Chris- 
tian friends with the rich promise of their religious 
profession. Modified views of this present world 
gave them less fiery expectation of the world's un- 
spiritual gifts. They w r ere less feverish in the 
mere love of money. Their thoughts of business 
and of a diligent man's share of the comfortable, 
the substantial, the beautiful, and the honorable in 
this world, were pleasantly mingled with thoughts 
of righteousness, peace, and joy in the kingdom of 
God. They have become sordid men of the world. 
The force of the evidence of the gospel's divine 
origin clings to them. They remain in the visible 
Church, because there clings to them a habit of 
thinking that somehow their relation to the Church 
will help them, or save them, in the absence of 
any spiritual life to comfort them. They can not 
at will fling off the authority of Christ, and they 
will not let go that hold upon the world which has 
soiled their souls. What shall they do? They 



136 THE MASTER SOWER. 

smile over the recollection of the fervency of their 
first love. They contend with their uncomfortable 
convictions, at times, and interject a plea concern- 
ing the crudeness of their first experience, and its 
inconsistency with their enlarged business. They 
strike out of their Creed their first interpretation 
of the Spirit of Christ, and adjust their interpreta- 
tions to the requirements of men of very slight 
spiritual wants. They very adroitly turn their in- 
crease of knowledge to the increase of their mate- 
rial capital, and they make sure that their charity 
shall never exceed their income. 

Did the poor of old gladly hear Jesus only be- 
cause they were thriftless, fretting, idle paupers — 
men and women who had in them no elements of 
honorable worldly success? No. It is more than 
probable that poor, brave men, children of mis- 
fortune, whose very virtues in the circumstances in 
which they were placed kept them poor and pre- 
pared them the more readily to recognize Christ, 
were among the first to greet the glad tidings from 
Heaven. That the poor had the gospel preached 
unto them is evidence of Heaven's impartiality* 
rather than of Heaven's unjust discrimination be- 
tween the rich and the poor. 

There is nothing unworthy the promise of eter- 
nal life in the prophetic discernment of Christ as 
to the conduct of men in their effort to get rich. 
The ax is laid at the root of the tree. Shall the 
tree be cut down ? What kind of fruit is it bear- 



RICHES. 137 

ing? Are gold and silver and bank-notes, represent- 
atives of earthly values, bound up with the fibers of 
a human heart? Are they in the way whenever 
the Lord, by his Spirit, would gently lead men into 
higher views and richer enjoyment of life? What 
if Christ means no more than a spiritual death pro- 
ceeding from the non-use of the higher faculties of 
the soul, while the lower faculties are busy in 
making money only for money's sake? That is 
sufficiently significant. That is enough for the 
man who would be undeceived as to the quality of 
that eternal life which is to commence on earth, 
and move on with ever-growing and ever-glowing 
sympathy with the Spirit of the Son of God. 



XIX. 

PLEASURES AGAIN. 

WE have considered the sinful pleasures that 
prevent the Christian life on earth ; we have 
now to consider the pleasures — or the worldly 
methods of pleasure — that pervert the Christian 
life. The evil heart may effectually resist the gos- 
pel; the careless heart will lose the inspiration of 
the spirit of the gospel. 

Our Savior, in referring to the pleasures of this 
life as working failure in the Christian life, did not 
therefore recommend the error of the ascetic. As- 
ceticism is one extreme; intoxication by merely 
earthly pleasures is the other extreme. Both miss 
the heavenly mark which the Savior proposes for 
the aim and happiness of mankind. 

Christianity, as well as philosophy, condemns 
what is irrational in amusement. Christianity is 
philosophy — the true love of the true wisdom, in 
time and in eternity. The healthy religious senti- 
ment does not proclaim, "Work all the time;" 
neither does it approve of play that completely dis- 
qualifies the man for work. By just so much as 
genuine Christian sentiment gains the ascendency 
in a soul, does that soul regard with just suspicion 
whatever, in the name of amusement, tends to de- 
138 



PLEASURES AGAIN. 139 

press or degrade the vital Christian sentiment. 
The professed Christian who stands idly whittling a 
stick while he declares, for instance, that another 
engaged in a game of chess is essentially sinning, is 
not a faithful exponent of Christian philosophy. We 
would not trust the whittler to write out an ex- 
haustive catalogue of sins of amusement ; for he 
does not undertake to decide what is rational or ir- 
rational as a method of pleasure. He simply pro- 
nounces this or that amusement a sin, according to 
his whim. 

The Christian religion denounces worldly meth- 
ods of pleasure only in the measure of its self- 
defense. It pleads for its own life in the earth. 
If it is of God, it has the divine right to live in 
the life of humanitv. The sincere, wise Christian 
is anxious only for w T hat is essential to the Christian 
life and character in a soul. As a champion of 
Christianity, he will not be indiscriminately censo- 
rious. In many repects he will judge of amuse- 
ments, as amusements, in the measure of their 
reasonable indulgence. 

There are amusements that prevent the healthful 
play of vital Christian sentiments. AVe sometimes 
fondly imagine, in our play, that we are recreating 
our energies for better work, when, in fact, we are 
adding to the weights that oppress us and impede 
us in the glorious race for the heavenly life that is 
set before us. In our play, we enter into evil asso- 
ciations that are clogs to our spirits. Mauy a noble 



140 THE MASTER SOWER. 

Christian conscience is sullied, even as innocent 
little children's hands are soiled playing with black- 
ened coals. We may make the distinction of the 
intrinsic and the extrinsic evil of the thing with 
which we play; but, after all, the important ques- 
tion is, Does the plaything disturb, does it soil^ 
the vital religious sentiments which the gospel is de- 
signed to inspire in our souls — the sentiments which 
have given us sweeter pleasure, more real delight, 
than any temporal playthings? We would not have 
the stream to fail by being frittered away. We 
would not have the heavenward current of glorious 
religious sentiments driven back by a multitude of 
little aimless amusements. There is vigor in the 
play of wholesome Christian sentiments. Why ask, 
" What harm is there in dancing, what harm in 
horse-racing, what harm in this or that or anything " 
that mars the beauty or enervates the vigor of the 
Christian sentiments that enter into the spiritual 
character of a child of immortality ? 

There are worldly pleasures incompatible with a 
refined Christian taste. Questions of refined Chris- 
tian taste are highly important ; but they are not to 
be confounded with questions of conscience. Con- 
science has enough to do with attending to the 
questions that properly belong to it. A man thor- 
oughly converted to the Lord Christ is translated 
into a new spiritual world wherein he sees, is 
touched by, and appreciates new spiritual beauty. 
A truly converted man is a man of renovated taste. 



PLEASURES AGAIN. 141 

He is still a free man, — he knows it ; he feels it ; 
he appreciates it. He does not follow every in- 
citement to giddy pleasure; for he abhors spirit- 
ual bondage. He will not be enslaved even by an 
innocent amusement. There is something here very 
different from what is commonly called conscien- 
tiousness; yet it is something that does not deserve 
a sneer. Delicacy of Christian taste deserves our 
admiration. Here is not a mere formal repudia- 
tion of this or that amusement, simply because one 
has made a formal profession of religion, and at 
the same time longs for forbidden fruit ; but rather 
there is the manifestation of a purpose to avoid 
failure on the way, by doing no violence, even for 
the sake of transient pleasures, to the awakened 
taste for higher and nobler things that please the 
religiously reconstructed mind. Why may not one 
turn away from some amusements, not because he 
judges them sinful per se } but because they no 
longer please his mind? And may they not fail to 
please because the source of a higher pleasure has 
not failed in the man? 

When the precious seed of Christ-truth has been 
sown in a heart, when one has made a promising 
profession of Christ, and when he has been a con- 
siderable time on the way, then failure in the char- 
acter, which the Christ-truth is designed to impress 
in a soul, is all the more sad to the observer who 
appreciates the excellence of the pleasure which 
flows from the deep sources of the Christian char- 



142 THE MASTER SOWER. 

acter. It is a more striking failure than in the 
case of those who misapprehend the gospel, whose 
superficial joy is easily and rapidly dried up. A 
greater expectation is disappointed. One has been 
time enough on the way for Christian manhood to 
be developed; therefore we do not expect to see 
him hurting himself like a child at play. If his 
hand must be crippled, we would rather it were 
done through handling tools than through handling 
toys, w r hich he should have outgrown. We expect 
in him a mind, through grace divine, tolerably well- 
balanced concerning worldly amusements. 

We have seen men whose business was seden- 
tary, sacrifice their physical health to too much 
amusement, which they named " exercise" or " rec- 
reation." We have seen men whose profession 
was Christian, sacrifice their spiritual health — sac- 
rifice everything but the " profession" — all in the 
name of necessary amusement, that they might not 
give the world an impression of "sour godliness;" 
and they have succeeded by giving the world an 
impression of insipid godliness. We do not call 
that religious health which consists in dissipating all 
disposition for religious work. 

If we look at it from a proper point of view, 
there is nothing ungracious in our Lord's rebuke 
of our excessive devotion to worldly amusement. 
It is, in fact, a deserved rebuke of our narrow view 
of amusement when there is not an equally cheer- 
ful view of duty — of what we owe to God and to 



PLEASURES AGAIN. 143 

our higher nature. How freely we creatures talk 
about "liberal" views sometimes, when, in fact, 
our view is so narrow as to shut out God and 
duty ! 

The warning of the Savior is, that the Chris- 
tian, starting out with high hope, may not fail on 
the way in the Christian character through too 
confident conformity with the amusements — that is, 
the methods of pleasure — of the exclusively worldly 
character. 

Jesus Christ looked with unclouded vision into 
an open heaven ; therefore our faith is in One 
whom we believe to have seen into heaven, who 
divinely knows whereof he speaks. He speaks 
with the spiritual authority of conscious oneness 
with God. The Divine One blesses the man who 
has not seen, but believes that Jesus saw more 
than the science of earth reveals. It is not a 
slight question in the mind of the sincere believer, 
" What may or may not interfere with my soul's 
following the heavenly vision of the Son of God?" 
Shall the inferior pleasure be permitted to obscure 
the souPs vision of the superior? Shall the less 
good take precedence of the greater? Of what 
use is it to attempt to be a Christian at all, if not 
to be an earnest one? And how can one be an 
earnest Christian without having some view of 
heaven eye to eye with Christ — a view of heaven 
that convinces him that this life is a preparation, 
and not an uninterrupted play? 



1 44 THE MASTER SOWER. 

We believe in real playing; we believe also in 
real praying. We deprecate the praying that loads 
the conscience with a constant dread of amusement; 
we deprecate the playing that fills the heart with a 
distaste, a dread of praying, and renders praying a 
farce by making it to appear solely in the light of 
a ceremonial performance, a dull formality, mani- 
festing no steady desire for the life, light, joy, and 
purity of heaven. 

The Christ-truth is designed to give moral dig- 
nity to human character and life. The man who 
heeds the suggestion of the Son of God must cher- 
ish some patient thinking with reference to the 
quality and measure of the pleasures of this life. 
He shall not be in bondage. He shall have free 
exaltation of character. He shall find that as he 
becomes a man in Christ he will " put away child- 
ish things. " We find no contradiction in the hu- 
mility which Jesus inculcates and the dignity of 
character and life to which they aspire who re- 
peatedly engage in acts of worship in the spirit of 
the Lord Jesus Christ. The quality of some pleas- 
ures, and the excessive measure of others, interfere 
with the modest dignity that he is to maintain who 
accepts, in his inmost soul, the Christian theory of 
redeemed manhood. 

It is not for us dogmatically to decide what 
shall be the specific interludes of a life of devotion 
to the religion of Christ. We may leave to each 
the songs that please him best. The danger of 



PLEASURES AGAIN. 145 

losing Christ's truth as a rule of life lies in a gen- 
eral erroneous view of earthly pleasures, rather 
than in specific amusements. A condemnation of 
"innocent pleasures" is not intended, nor implied, 
when we point out the injury done in that name 
to positive Christian character. Look through 
even the innocent amusements of a soul, what do 
you ultimately find? Character that can pass 
through fire? Substance? Charity that has weight? 
Resources of heavenly enjoyment? What if all 
these qualities have failed? Now, there are souls 
on earth that will reveal all these positive quali- 
ties. Their amusements are transparent. The out- 
lines of substantial Christian character appear all 
the more clearly through the pure surrounding at- 
mosphere of their recreating amusements. They 
indicate at play how they have been at work. They 
glorify the earthly sources of pleasure which the 
Lord has given them. They give a charm to the 
very amusements which empty idlers invest with 
nothingness. Looking again through the amuse- 
ments (innocent per se) of a soul, what do you ulti- 
mately find? No substance; no heroic character; 
no grave charity; no vigorous spring of heavenly 
enjoyment. The poise of Christian character is 
overthrown. We have an illustration of Christ's 
prediction : " Choked with the pleasures of this life, 
and bringing no fruit to perfection." 

10 



XX. 

UNRIPE FRUIT. 

IN a just view of the Christian religion, "the 
cares, riches, and pleasures of this life " are rep- 
rehended only as they lead to failure in the pro- 
duction of ripe fruit — mature Christian character. 
In the Parable of the Sower the Lord Jesus Christ 
speaks with no uncertain accent when he describes 
.certain persons as bringing f ■ no fruit to perfection," 
;or maturity.. They are a particular class of per- 
.SQns.; Not those whose evil hearts have directly 
•and maliciously designed to resist the truth; not 
those whose shallow hearts have misapprehended 
and .almost immediately lost the truth, — but those 
who , may be said to have failed on the way to ma- 
turity of the Christian character proposed by the 
-truth of Christ, implying a somewhat prolonged but 
-irregular and deficient effort. 

We have seen unripe fruit hanging on a tree, 
undergoing two entirely dissimilar processes,. The 
one was a process of going on to maturity; the 
other: was a process of decaying from .the -point of 
arrested growth. We have seen something analo- 
gous to this in\the fruit of the gospel; in the lives 
of its professors. Then, we have seen instances of 
human imperfection not altogether inconsistent 
146 



UNRIPE FRUIT. 147 

with a maturity of Christian love, that made our 
hearts glad. 

The same apology can not be made for imma- 
turity of the most obvious Christian graces and 
virtues as for human imperfection. There is in 
Christianity the constant assumption of the imper- 
fection of man. The gospel proposes a right spirit 
for man — proposes to cover man's weakness with 
the mantle of divine charity. The law of love de- 
mands ripeness. The heart is to be made fruitful. 
The fruit of the heart is to give evidence of relig- 
ious culture. We do not refer just here to the 
unripe fruit that proceeds from the bud — or, de- 
fective judgment — but to the unripe fruit that pro- 
ceeds from the heart that has not at least the judg- 
ment's good intention. The "pure heart/' in its 
earthly stage of purity, does not imply the perfect, 
the flawless judgment. Many a holy intention has 
ended in a mistake. 

There is a ripeness in advanced life distinct 
from the unripeness of recent converts. You have 
seen buds of rich promise opening in many a re- 
vival-field. The fragrance of blossoming graces 
has cheered your heart. Your soul drank in the 
sweetness of the springtime of God's love in the 
heart of a religiously awakened community. You 
were not surprised that planting should differ from 
harvest. The innocent mistakes of young graces 
were as pleasant as children's play. The minifying 
of the world, before a just comprehension of the 



148 THE MASTER SOWER. 

magnitude of duties to be performed in the world, 
was not disagreeable. The abandon of young joy 
created no disgust in your mind. The misapplica- 
tion of faith to remove difficulties with which faith 
had no legitimate business was not unexpected. 
The young missionary spirit, pouncing on old 
heathens at home, was not regarded as a serious 
blunder. Happy, enthusiastic converts to the spirit 
of the gospel of the Lord Christ! Heaven ap- 
peared so near that earth seemed almost an unre- 
ality; and they were scarcely patient, at first, to 
plant in the earth at their feet the seeds of practi- 
cal duties, to spring up along their pathway. 

There are certain erroneous views of " death-bed 
repentance" which sadly interfere with right views 
of ripe fruit of Christian living. It is only in 
peculiar and exceptional circumstances of the last 
sickness that initial preparation then, for heaven, 
can be supposed most reasonable and seasonable. 
It is an abnormal preparation that is then made. 
The normal preparation is earlier, so that there 
may be time and room for the growth of fruit of 
Christian life on earth. It is true that there are 
circumstances which shed luster on the lingering 
mercy and spiritually saving grace of God. Some- 
times, in dying, the real life of the soul begins; 
but it is well for each one to assume that he is not 
an exception to the general rule of the gospel that 
a genuine and most hopeful Christian life is to be- 
gin and grow and mature on earth. A deliberate 



UNRIPE FRUIT. 149 

calculation that his case is an exception vitiates his 
expectation. 

Many of the Christian profession lay scarcely 
any restraint on the baser passions and grosser ap- 
petites. Herein is an illustration of a vicious 
theory of salvation. The Christ-truth is not un- 
erringly realized in the life the moment it is per- 
ceived by the mind. Grossness of appetite, unre- 
strained animality, are not sanctified by glimpses of 
the beauty of holiness which even aspiring spirit- 
uality may catch from time to time. Revivals of 
religion are often misinterpreted because straggling 
rays of the bright beauty of holiness, received in 
the pauses of unholy passions and of excessive 
worldliness, have been mistakenly regarded as 
pledges of salvation. There is a false view of 
salvation that imposes no habitual restraint upon 
the lawlessness of the fallen man. Fallen man 
must rise to a just expectation of heavenly joy and 
peace. His salvation must be a religious matter- 
of-fact. The transient rays of divine beauty that 
touch the lingering spiritual perception of the 
man-animal are to be supplemented by the full 
blaze, the steady illumination, the warming influ- 
ence, the developed fruitfulness, of the Sun of 
righteousness. 

Let us now examine certain distinct character- 
istics of unripeness in the practice of professed 
Christians. 

There are unripe Christians like unripe sour 



150 THE MASTER SOWER. 

fruit. Can a man in some way receive the Christ- 
truth, and weave it into a creed or a theory of 
salvation, notwithstanding unmistakable and habit- 
ual acidity of heart? This man need not be con- 
founded with the ripe Christian whose mild tart- 
ness flavors his ripeness. There is an unmitigated 
sourness of unripeness — sour grapes that set one's 
teeth on edge. The- affections, which Christ de- 
signed to be kept sweet, are not to be as steeped 
in vinegar. There are professed Christians whose 
kindness has the sharp flavor of reluctant duty. 
You never think of them as adopting the senti- 
ment of the psalmist: "How sweet are thy words 
unto my taste; yea, sweeter than honey to my 
mouth." Their animal spirits appear to have 
turned sour. 

Much that is radically disagreeable in the dis- 
position or temper of men has been wrongly at- 
tributed to what some regard as the essentially 
impracticable spirituality of the gospel. There are 
men who regard sour Christians as the real expo- 
nents of the gospel; real exponents, but not agree- 
able characters; ripe fruit of prime error, instead 
of the unripe fruit of the seed sown for the pro- 
duction of ripe, holy, and sweet affections. 

The error of the sour Christian consists in the 
unnatural process which he forces the Christ-truth 
to undergo in his heart. He misapplies this truth; 
gets its wrong meaning; misses its sweet signifi- 
cance; "places so little check on his bad affections 



UNRIPE FRUIT. 151 

that his religious affections become perverted; uses 
the Christ-truth in such a way that he gets a char- 
acter which is neither worldly nor heavenly/ but is 
a specimen of sour unripeness — with no prospect of 
maturity — in the field of the Redeemer. 

There are unripe Christians like unripe, taste- 
less fruit. The tasteless Christian is a disappoint- 
ment to the person of religious taste. Where is 
the richness of the ripe grapes on the branches of 
the vine? Does nothing remain but religious in- 
sipidity after the shell of one's Christian profession 
is penetrated? What remains in the likeness of a 
spiritual Christ, what that reminds of " gen- 
erous fruits that never fail, on trees immortal 
growing?" 

It is not the violence done to literary taste, but 
that done to refined Christian taste, which often 
convinces us that Christ's truth has been abused. 
Christian taste is that matured by communion with 
the divinely-loving spirit of Christ. The insipid 
Christian is he — whatever his profession, however 
rich his earthly pleasures, however great and va- 
ried his worldly possessions, however dignified his 
cares — who fails to evince that within him is the 
Spiritual Christ, the source of sentiments worthy 
his immortality. 

There are unripe Christians like unripe withered 
fruit. When we say •■" backsliders," we do not 
keep so prominently in view the idea of fruitless- 
ness, conveyed in the Savior's talk about the seed 



152 THE MASTER SO WER. 

of vital truth sown in the heart and bringing forth 
no fruit to perfection. The reverses of fortune of 
men, in the matter of wealth, health, social posi- 
tion, and intellectual force, reveal men who have 
shrunk into narrower limits of natural life. We 
see them but shadows of their former selves. We 
see the man of great wealth stricken with hopeless 
poverty. He no longer has any nerve for specula- 
tion. The whole life has shrunk with the collapse 
of worldly possessions. We see the man of buoy- 
ant health and abundant flow of animal spirits 
stricken with hopeless disease. His soul is in 
bondage to his emaciated body. He becomes a 
smaller man in all his hopes and plans. We see 
the honorable reputation of a man of great social 
influence blasted. He whom the noble delighted 
to honor becomes but a dainty morsel for paltry 
knaves. We see the man of mighty intellect yield- 
ing to insanity, and becoming weaker than the lit- 
tle but expanding mind of a child. There are, 
likewise, specimens of withered Christians on earth. 
They are shrunken from what they once were in 
Christ. There is no longer any grand proportion 
of Christian graces in their lives. They are loosely 
attached to the Church. They are spiritless, just as 
the withered fruit of a tree is juiceless. 

There are unripe Christians like unripe, good- 
for-nothing fruit. It is said of some green fruit 
plucked from the tree that it is good for nothing. 
Let the fruit remain on the tree, and it is at least 



UNRIPE FRUIT. 153 

good for growing — good for ripening. There are 
some nominal Christians who are not even good 
for growing, nor for ripening; and, being unfit for 
that, their uselessness is best described as good-for- 
nothingness. 

There is no place for zeroes in the kingdom of 
Christ. Each man must be a significant figure, or 
nothing, in fact. He must count at least one, to 
be added up in the column of units. The Lord 
may make some use — beyond our present compre- 
hension — of those whom society designates as ut- 
terly worthless characters; but Christian society 
may well continue its designation in the case of the 
class of people who exhibit no responsible useful- 
ness — who are good for nothing in the sphere of a 
good w T ilPs activity. 



The gospel of Christ is misrepresented by the 
characters indicated by its Author, when he said : 
" Some [seed of Christ-truth] fell among thorns; 
and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. . . . 
That which fell among thorns are they, which, when 
they have heard, go forth, and are choked with 
cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and 
bring no fruit to perfection." The Lord Jesus 
Christ can be better represented in human life on 
earth, notwithstanding the variety of human in- 
firmities, the obstructions to the vision of faith, 
the disorder of society, and the possessions, the 



154 THE MASTER SOWER. 

cares, and the pleasures of a temporal world. The 
human heart can be educated for a world and a 
society of higher order. There is a glorious bless- 
edness for them who hunger and thirst after right- 
eousness, for they shall be satisfied. 



We turn, with a feeling of blessed relief, to a 
view of the gospel of Christy accepted and kept in 
good and honest hearts, who bring forth fruit with 
patience. 



XXI. 

THE CHRIST=TRUTH ACCEPTED WITH 
HONEST CONVICTIONS. 

THE human race has sinned. The blood of 
mankind is corrupted. That all men have in- 
herited the taint of the moral corruption of a primi- 
tive man is the testimony of the suffering heart of 
the race of man. Transmitted suffering and trans- 
mitted enjoyment alike declare that the human race 
is a unit; that there is what has been termed the 
solidarity of the race of man. It costs us some- 
thing to be men, to be of man. 

There is a sinfulness spread out over the whole 
race. The lines of the generations are diverging as 
we look a few generations onward; but as we look 
many generations backward, these lines converge 
toward a primitive man. There is a break in the 
records of history ; then Moses gives us a chapter 
of the history of a primal fall — a history gathered 
from the material of tradition. God providentially 
gives the chapter the seal of divine authority. The 
Bible states a fact which appears as a fact in every 
point of view of man's experience of sin. Herein 
is the ground of a conviction opening the way for a 
new life in sympathy with the manifested life of 
Jesus Christ. Is there an individual so far removed 

155 



L56 THE MASTER SOWER 

from the fact of sinfulness that there is in him no 
ground of personal conviction? Can he say to all 
other men, without fear of contradiction or condem- 
nation, "Which of you convinceth me ot^ siir. ),,> 
Can his conscience unfalteringly pronounce himself 
holy while ignoring the Christ? 

Mark that trembling jailer at Philippi, in the 
presence ot^ the apostles o( Christ? True, he was 
frightened by a mighty earthquake, lie was un- 
nerved, and his mind so distracted that he came near 
taking his life with his own hands. But now the 
danger is over. His prisoners evidently have no in- 
tention of trying to escape. The jailer does not 
tremble for fear oi' the penalty o( permitting the 
escape of his prisoners. " Sirs," he asks, " what must 
I do to be saved ?" This man had listened during 
the night to the religious devotions of these heroic 
Christians in bonds. It is a reasonable supposition 
that, during the previous day, he had been ponder- 
ing in his mind the message o( Christ. He had 
trembled under the ministry oi' pressing physical 
danger. He is now separated from all the world by 
a sentiment of personal sinfulness; and the salvation 
he inquires about is salvation from sin. 

The jailer's inquiry begins with himself, a con- 
scious sinner. Now, a man o( to-day makes no more 
honest beginning, who seriously repeats the jailer's 
inquiry, while death does not immediately stare him 
in the face, while heathen superstitions do not ex- 
cessively alarm him, while he has some deeper in- 



Til E CHRIS T- TR UTH A CCEP TED. 1 5 7 

sight into the origin of evil, while his intellect takes 
a broader survey of salvation, while his emotions 
are under firmer control. 

There would be no self-conviction in a human 
soul if the Holy Spirit were not moving in the 
bosom of humanity. The self-conscionsness of guilty 
man is divinely assisted. His sleep in sin is some- 
times disturbed by the Spirit of God. His con- 
science is illumined. The voice divine saying, " Yon 
have sinned/' is distinctly another than the voice 
of one saying to himself, " I have sinned;" but that 
self-conviction is never uttered within the total 
darkness of a sinful nature; there is a "dim re- 
ligious light" strniro;lino; through the stained soul 
wherein the Holy Spirit seeks a sanctuary. The 
Divine One pauses at the threshold of the soul's 
liberty. He does not force an entrance. Liberty is 
sacred, even in the view of God. The fullness of 
the light of the Divine Presence is not in that soul 
which withholds its consent. 

A man honestly confesses that he is just such a 
sinner as the gospel of Christ describes. It is a 
confession of specific conviction, the point or edge 
of which is not blunted, but is as the sharp sword 
of the Spirit of God. 

In honest conviction there is recognition of the 
holiness of God. The sincere reader of the Bible 
receives an impression of an immaculate character. 
This character is divine. The Holy One rises 
sublimely above the darkest phases of the history 



158 THE MASTER SOWER. 

of the Israelites, the nation chosen to exhibit in 
many respects, by striking contrast, the glory of the 
God of nations. God's holiness is declared by the 
very " hidings of his face/' as when he says : " Your 
iniquities have separated between you and your God, 
and your sins have hid his face from you." Heart- 
felt conviction of sin and honest self-reproach are 
the very beginning of a true conception of the di- 
vine holiness. The majesty of moral purity ap- 
pears. Human self-condemnation vindicates the 
Holy One, whose ways are not as the ways of 
men. 

The life and character of Jesus Christ are the 
true expression of the will of God concerning the 
life and character of men. No purity of lifeless 
things in the temple at Jerusalem, no whiteness of 
priestly robes, no lamb even without blemish, no 
rigid separating of things clean and unclean, has so 
vividly expressed the idea of holiness — has so de- 
clared the Divine Father. Christ is the Word of 
God — the revealing Word ; and " the Word was made 
flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, 
the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) 
full of grace and truth." " In him was life ; and 
the life was the light of men." It is in receiving 
this light within the darkness of the soul that is 
equivalent to a conviction, in some degree, of per- 
sonal sinfulness. Unlike Christ, unlike God — is 
not this conviction of sin formulated? 

There are diversified phenomena of conviction of 



THE CHRIST-TRUTH ACCEPTED. 159 

sin, yet all consistent with the one phase of honesty 
of self-condemnation. 

A child, in a childish way, feels an inherited 
disposition of soul as wrong in the sight of God. 
The child is the man in miniature, notwithstanding 
it can not trace the rationale of the spiritual cor- 
ruption of the human race. By just so much as a 
child can realize itself as in the wrong, it can em- 
brace the Christian religion as adjusted to the mind 
of childhood, and exemplify the wisdom and grace 
of Jesus, who said: " Suffer little children, and for- 
bid them not, to come unto me." The same Divine 
Spirit that will not crush natural or instinctive 
virtues, will not spurn the convictions of the heart 
of childhood. The same spirit in the grown-up 
man that is delighted with the natural virtues that 
are discoverable, in the worst child, will not be 
displeased with the self-reproaches of that child 
coming within the sphere of influences of the re- 
ligion of Jesus. Once admit that this religion is of 
God, and it irresistibly follows that it is for men, 
and the children of men ; and if aught of sin is 
bound up in the heart of a child, the Spirit of God 
will not withhold the light in which self-condemna- 
tion is made. 

A very ignorant man, with a childlike faith in 
God, sees that all his life has gone wrong. The 
taint of sin within him has at last become offensive 
to himself. He is not one to grapple with the 
problem of evil; it is too intricate for him. He 



* 



160 THE MASTER SOWER. 

does not call evil good; he condemns himself for 
so long neglecting the good within his reach, and 
for cherishing evil in his heart. Men of the world 
smile at what was gracefulness in this man's child- 
hood, now become awkwardness in the throes of 
conviction ; but, after all, there remains the sim- 
plicity of honesty to be admired. He needs not to 
see all the length and breadth of divine truth, all 
the grandeur of heaven, all the problem of divine 
government, in order to detect and to condemn 
evil in his own heart, and to realize that his self- 
condemnation in some measure coincides with Di- 
vine disapprobation. If in this matter he go some- 
what too far, it is not so great an evil as not to go 
far enough. 

A grossly wicked man experiences a sudden 
check in the smooth current of his self-esteem. 
He honestly questions the habitually favorable 
judgment he has passed upon his own character, 
in violent opposition to Christ. This is not sim- 
ply a case of violent alarm in the midst of inde- 
finable terrors of God's law; it is a case of simple 
honesty with one's self. The very violence of a 
lawless life affords an opportunity for unmistakable 
self-condemnation. The Christ-truth is a standard 
by which this man measures himself. He com- 
pares the facts of his own bad life with the plain 
traits of the character of a good man, and declares 
to himself that he is not what he ought to be. 

It is a hopeful sign of reformation for a really 



THE CHRIST- TR UTH A CCEP TED. 1 6 1 

and unmistakably bad man unequivocally and lit- 
erally to say so. True, he may never become, on 
earth, the finest character that Christianity can pro- 
duce ; but he is honest in one particular, without 
which general dishonesty is utterly hopeless. 

The grossly wicked man certainly can never 
become a good man without some definite convic- 
tion of sin, any more than a grossly ignorant man 
can become a knowing man without some convic- 
tion of ignorance. 

The sudden reformation of many a decidedly 
bad man has surprised us, and has appeared more 
like a fact of supernaturalism than it really is, be- 
cause we are so slow to believe in the possibility 
of honest convictions in the lowest degradation of 
the human heart. We often expect the Almighty 
to make bare his arm where divine influences are 
simply making bare the heart of a man who con- 
demns himself in the light of Christ. 

The man of richly cultivated mind is not neces- 
sarily, on that account, less the subject of the tone 
of conviction of sinfulness which agrees with the 
solemn charge of sinfulness conveyed in the evan- 
gelical Scriptures. 

The literary taste and culture which are accom- 
panying the Spirit of Christ in our age sometimes 
attempt to deny the bitter germ of sinfulness in 
the heart of humanity. The sins of genius often 
find more favor than the convictions that will not 
be hushed by the smooth accents of genius; and 

11 



162 THE MASTER SO WER. 

self-condemnation, in accordance with the spirit of 
the gospel of Christ, is often regarded as almost 
an unpardonable offense of the literary character. 

A cultured man becomes distinctly conscious of 
wrong affections, and honestly condemns himself. 
His conviction as to what is radically wrong in 
his heart does not interfere with his literary taste. 
He is not offended with the literary diction of the 
evangelists. He may divest the gospel of circum- 
stances of time and place; yet the Holy Spirit and 
the heart of Jesus touch him in the depths of his 
human nature much the same as they touch any 
other sinful man. 

The mind which has been educated without 
reference to the moral or religious principles of 
Christianity can not begin to accept the Christ- 
truth as a rule of life without a definite convic- 
tion of sinfulness, answering to the tone of Christ's 
denunciation of whatever is opposed to the spirit- 
ual kingdom which the Christ proclaims as divine. 

We may well pause before we question the social 
honesty of many a man who indignantly repels the 
charge of flagrant sin against humanity while he is 
convicted of sin in the presence of God. The hu- 
mane side of Christianity, almost unconsciously, in 
no small degree he may have accepted. Wherever 
there is any lack of spiritual integrity there is room 
for that peculiar conviction of sin which is implied 
in the very promulgation of the gospel of Christ. 
The broken spirit of a man is to be made whole. 



THE CHRIS T- TR UTH A CCEP TED. 163 

Not alone the heart of the grossest sinner — of hira 
who violates the plainest dictates of humanity, who 
exhibits the least and the fewest traits of natural 
goodness — is to be searched ; there is a beauty of 
conviction that shines through the spirit of him 
who, in the light of the Divine Presence, condemns 
himself while men praise him. 

Such a man, with uncovered heart and humble 
spirit, stands not far from that spiritual kingdom, 
the glory of which shines clearer and clearer unto 
the day of his complete acceptance. 



XXII. 

THE CHRIST=TRUTH ACCEPTED WITH 
HONEST REPENTANCE- 

THE preaching of John the Baptist, with the 
beginning of the ministry of Jesus, is like the 
opening of a mighty poem, an epic of a race re- 
deemed from the bondage of sin, struggling through 
centuries into light, life, and liberty : " Repent ye ; 
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. . . . Pre- 
pare ye the way of the Lord; make his paths 
straight." 

The sermons of John and Jesus were in keeping 
with the state of society, the requirements of a 
spiritual reformation, the inauguration of a divine 
religion, the divine purpose to set up on earth a 
heavenly kingdom designed to transform the heart 
of humanity. 

The gospel of Christ is consistent throughout. 
If John was truly the herald of the coming 
Lord; if the day of Immanuel was at hand; if the 
life of men here below was to exhibit a more 
heavenly phase; and if men's lives had become no- 
toriously bad, — then no more fitting theme than 
repentance could have engaged the soul of the 
herald and the Savior. 

John preached repentance — the lifting up of sor- 
164 



HONEST REPENTANCE. 165 

row for sin into a higher sphere than that of regret 
for the temporal inconveniences of a disorderly life — 
elevating sorrow into the solemn presence of God, 
joining to it sincere confession of sinfulness, and a 
reformation preparatory to the spiritually regener- 
ating influences of the Divine Spirit. 

There was to be more than conviction of sin ; 
there was to be sentiment, and action, and suspen- 
sion of bad habits — "fruit meet for repentance;" 
all appropriate to an honest desire to enter into 
spiritual life. 

To feel sorry for sin, as transgression of the law 
of God, is the very essence of that repentance 
preached by the Son of God. To act as moved 
by such a sorrow, is the very essence of that hon- 
esty which is accepted in the sight of God. To 
constitute Christian repentance there must follow, 
upon some degree of conviction of sinfulness, a cor- 
responding degree of godly sorrow, a holy purpose, 
a pure desire, and a practical effort. 

Sorrow arising from conviction of personal sin- 
fulness has ranged from the tenderest and most 
touching regret to the deepest and most violent 
anguish. There is a tendency in the mind of each 
man to fix a technical degree of penitential sorrow 
corresponding to that which characterized a spiritual 
revolution in his own life. It is often forgotten 
that there are ever-varying phases of conviction of 
sinfulness, and that the main consideration should 
be such a degree of regret in the soul of the indi- 



166 THE MASTER SOWER. 

vidual who is convicted of sin against God as will 
urge him to attain by the grace of God unto a 
better life. 

If we conceive of a condition of society on earth 
in which, for successive generations, all the children 
of men are faithfully taught by vitally Christian 
parents concerning the Christian life, we can still 
conceive of convictions of the want of an intense 
religious experience preceding spiritual regenera- 
tion. A tenderer sorrow for sinfulness might well 
move the hearts of men, of no very vicious charac- 
ter, on the way to a correspondingly loftier holi- 
ness, and religious energy of conduct. But such a 
condition of society is not in our day. We see 
moral corruption rather than Christian virtue trans- 
mitted from parents to children • and Ave shall con- 
tinue to witness, if the world become not utterly 
godless, the diversified phenomena of godly sorrow 
for sin. 

Intense fear has often been mistaken for holy re- 
gret, while many an honest repentance toward God, 
when fear has been held in abeyance, has been re- 
garded as nothing more than religious terror. A 
sorrow refined by the presence of the Holy Spirit, 
springing from the depths of a resistless conviction 
of sinfulness, and the deep consciousness of want of 
Christ-life, with honest approval of such life, is 
misinterpreted by the soul which only fear can 
move, and which regards the fact of human sinful- 
ness as nothing for personal anxiety. 



HONEST REPENTANCE. 167 

It is indeed the voice of divine command that 
we hear saying, " Eepent ye;" but there is a volume 
of meaning in the voice. It is a note of prepara- 
ration for the gifts of the Divine Spirit. It is a 
proclamation of the Great King concerning what 
ought to be. It is a command that leaves some- 
what of spontaneity to the godly sorrow of the man 
who, in the light of the Holy Spirit and of the law, 
contemplates his sinfulness and condemns himself. 

There is a sorrow for sin responsive to the suf- 
fering of Him who grieved on Calvary for the sin 
of humanity : 

"From Calvary a cry was heard — 
A bitter and heart-rending cry ; 
My Savior! every mournful word 
Bespeaks thy soul's deep agony." 

Surely, on that cross a sinless One was making 
a sacrifice for sin. The tragedy on Calvary might 
well move the heart of a man, convinced of the fact 
of his personal sinfulness, with painful regret and 
an unutterable yearning for some experience of per- 
sonal reconciliation with God. 

A holy purpose is born in the sorrow of a just 
conception of the sinfulness of sin. An honest re- 
pentance can not be aimless — can not be like the 
fluttering of a w^ounded bird, and no more. 

The repentance that Christ preaches has in it a 
definite purpose of Christian life. The Savior does 
not attach a simple, unalterable value to sorrow, as 
if tears alone w r ere to pass current in a bargain for 



168 THE MASTER SOWER. 

salvation. Christ preaches a repentance that con- 
tains a Christian purpose. 

Those Jews who sincerely repented under the 
preaching of John the Baptist, signalized a pur- 
pose to receive the message of Him whom John 
preached — the Messiah — who was to come and es- 
tablish a spiritual kingdom. Well might John 
sternly rebuke those Pharisees who came to his 
baptism with hypocritical intention, who evinced 
no purpose nor desire for spiritual reformation. 
But among the people who received the " baptism 
of repentance" were some whose souls were thirst- 
ing for life, who were going forth to meet the 
Christ. 

We estimate the value of repentance under the 
gospel of Christ not so much by the measure of 
pain of soul — for men live under various degrees 
of consciousness of depravity — as by the purpose 
of life that is evolved from whatever sorrow for 
sin, as sin, a soul may experience. There can be 
no attaining unto the Christian life by ignoring 
the fact of sin, and there can be no hopeful sor- 
row for sin that does not give birth to a holy 
purpose. 

Repentance under the gospel is the soul's turn- 
ing heavenward. It is therefore not an aimless 
alarm of soul. A man convinced that the course 
of his life is radically wrong, purposes, by the 
grace of God, to amend his life, and to seek spirit- 
ual salvation. Having yielded to a definite con- 



HONEST REPENTANCE. 169 

viction of sinfulness, he can not consistently nor 
honestly fail to cherish in his heart a purpose to at- 
tain unto Christian holiness. 

Xo man is honestly penitent, according to the 
design of Christ, who has not in his soul a distinct 
purpose to reform his life. A superficial social 
morality can not take the place of a profound 
spirituality. There are thousands in the present 
stage of Christian morality in our land who may 
well contemplate and purpose a spiritual reforma- 
tion that shall search the profoundest resources of 
the heart of Jesus. 

The repentance which Christ preached at the 
beginning of his ministry may be considered, in an 
important sense, as the beginning of a Christian 
life. It contains certain elements of such a life. 
It is the awakening of sentiments appropriate to 
the religious life of a Christian. A penitent spirit 
is already within the sphere of the spirit of the 
gospel. It has entered a region of religious senti- 
ment with desire to go farther. Though practical 
reformation seem almost hopeless; though the 
darkest clouds float over the soul; though innu- 
merable difficulties perplex the mind; though faith 
long falter, — yet may desire, kept alive, make an 
opening in the clouds that surround the throne of 
God; for in the light of that desire, awakened by 
the call of the Son of God, is salvation defined. 

The w T ords of the Savior, saying, " Blessed are 
they that hunger and thirst after righteousness," 



170 THE MASTER SO WER. 

answer to "the voice of one crying in the wilder- 
ness, Repent ye." The repentance that Christ 
preaches is both a sorrow and a beatitude. There 
is a mourning that is intimately blended with hun- 
gering after righteousness. The words of blessed- 
ness that Jesus uttered in the memorable Sermon 
on the Mount are divine responses to the pleading 
of desire in hearts wounded by sin. 

A heart simply penitent can be said to be " good 
and honest" — in the words of our Lord's Parable 
of the Sower — for the simple reason that a peni- 
tent heart is in a condition good for the end pro- 
posed by the Christian religion. The soil is pre- 
pared for the seed of Christ-truth. The heart is 
in condition to appreciate the vital principles of 
Christianity. The hungering of the heart in a 
measure determines the salvation to be attained. 
Skepticism is baffled by the heart's satisfaction. 
Christianity meets the want of the soul that is truly 
penitent. 

The grand argument for the Christian religion 
is the argument for holiness of heart and life; an 
argument that may be appreciated in the measure 
of a sinful man's desire to be delivered from the 
bondage of sin, and to reach finally a sinless 
state — a heaven — the heaven of Jesus the Christ 
of God. 

If we regard the circumstances of the begin- 
ning of the ministry of Christ and of John the 
Baptist; if we think of the calm and holy spiritual 



HONEST REPENTANCE. 1 7 1 

kingdom that was soon to appeal to the hearts of 
men; if we contemplate the moral condition of 
men soon to be wooed and won by the Divine 
Spirit, we can conceive a practical view of the 
repentance required, and see how sinful habits, in 
some practical measure, were to be suspended as a 
pledge of honest repentance. The bad habits of 
thought and of conduct, contracted through many 
years of neglect of the higher life, may not be cor- 
rected in a day; but an effort to control these 
habits is certainly made by an honest penitent. 
The conscious effort is the beginning of his regen- 
eration. A cry for God is evolved from the depths 
of his heroic struggle. His need of Divine help 
becomes all the more apparent to him in the effort 
that he makes. The effort reveals the magnitude of 
his undertaking. 

It is the initial practical effort that is made 
which prevents the unfounded expectation of a 
mystic regeneration so often indulged by idle souls 
hungering for cheap glorification. The effort made 
under the conditions of honest repentance indi- 
cates, in some measure, the necessary spiritual trans- 
formation. The effort, trembling on the verge of 
failure, is, in effect, a confession of weakness, and 
pleads for Christ. 

The penitent does not seek in his effort a justi- 
fication of his past life, either of grossest vicious- 
ness or of mere irreligiousness. There is a con- 
viction of sinfulness that can not, in any case, ignore 



172 THE MAS TEE SO WER. 

a sinner's need of the mercy of God. The honest 
penitent's idea of forgiveness must be pure and 
simple; but the purpose of a Christian life can 
hardly be cherished in a soul that has not already 
made some initial practical effort consistent with 
regret for the past and hope for the future. 

There are immediate fruits of repentance that 
clearly show forth a souFs desire for a deeper 
spiritual regeneration that exhibits to the inmost 
consciousness the fruit of the Spirit of God. If re- 
pentance itself be regarded in some sense a conver- 
sion of the spirit of a man — a radical change of re- 
ligious intention — still it is but a change of sorrow, 
of desire, of purpose, and of effort, preparatory to a 
deeper, a mightier, a life-inspiring conversion, that 
may as well be termed a regeneration, a being born 
of the Spirit of God. Many a palpable reformation 
fails to be the regeneration comprehended in the 
declaration of Christ, " Ye must be born again." 

What, then, are the fruits of that repentance 
comprehended by the preaching of John, the herald 
of the spiritual kingdom of the Divine Redeemer? 
There must be more than the life of an ordinary, 
impenitent sinner. There ought not to be less than 
the religious life that is in complete and vital sym- 
pathy with the Son of God, the Savior of men. 



XXIII. • 

THE CHRIST=TRUTH ACCEPTED WITH 
HONEST CONVERSION. 

WHAT is Christian conversion ? Such is the 
question coldly and repeatedly asked by many 
who acknowledge no definite conviction of sinful- 
ness, and manifest no sincere repentance. No at- 
tempt is here made to answer such a question so as 
to satisfy the mind that realizes no spiritual want. 

It is sufficient for the present purpose to indicate 
that there is a Divine process by which a soul already 
convicted of sin, according to the Divine Spirit of 
the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, is led into a 
state of sympathy with the heart of Jesus, and into a 
state of communion w T ith the Holy Spirit. We have 
no controversy just now with the skepticism that 
yields to no conviction of sinfulness, and steels the 
heart against repentance. 

There is a repentance which is, in a degree, a state 
of belief in the gospel of Christ. It is, with con- 
viction of sinfulness, the beginning of the process of 
Christian conversion. We make no inquiry just 
here concerning the sources of one's belief that God 
addresses men through the records of the life, doc- 
trines, and death of Jesus. We recognize his belief 
as a simple matter of fact; there is no question of 

173 



174 TEE MASTER SOWER 

the man's belief. In this world we see men believ- 
ing in various systems of temporal belief; we see 
them acting on this phase of belief. We see men 
changed by the spirit and into the spirit that ani- 
mates their system of belief. We see a variety of 
currents of temporal human life. In this way of 
seeing, we do not degrade the claims of the gospel ; 
we rejoice in the phenomena of Christian belief; 
we indicate a conversion of the soul, consistent with 
sincere, earnest belief in the gospel as divine. 

Christian repentance is one phase of belief in 
Christ approaching genuine life in Christ. In re- 
pentance, we see belief generating sorrow, purpose, 
and effort. In repentance is belief in earnest in- 
deed, but not in peaceful rest. The current of life 
is changed in repentance, it is true, but not yet set- 
tled. Yet the penitent soul is in a state of prepa- 
ration to exercise trust in God. 

When we read in the Word of God that " with- 
out faith it is impossible to please Him," we infer 
that the reverse of this statement gives the simplest 
and correct intimation of Christian experience — with 
faith or trust, it is possible to please God. It is pos- 
sible, too, for one to have the testimony in his soul 
that he pleases God — a persuasion of his mind in- 
timately blended with his consciousness of trusting. 

This trust, illustrated in various ways in the gos- 
pel, is all that we may offer of intrinsic value to 
God. It is of the nature of a gift to God. It is 
the real bond of our soul's communion with God. 



HONEST CONVERSION. 175 

It is a first principle of religious life. How can 
anything else than trust serve as the bond of an 
everlasting union of the Divine and the human? 
Has not God created the soul of a human creature 
to trust the Creator? 

To trust in God — is it not a spiritual possibility 
slumbering in a human soul? Is not Christ ap- 
pointed to awake the dormant faculty of the soul, 
to educate it, to direct it, to be the medium of its 
happily reaching the bosom of the Father? What 
can be substituted for this trust? Penitential tears 
express a man's lack of trust in himself, his self- 
reproach for his weakness, the acknowledgment of 
his demerit. The purpose perfectly to obey the di- 
vine law, is not by any means the consummation of 
perfect obedience; difficulties rise like mountains in 
advance of such a purpose. A general belief of the 
gospel, based on the evidence of its divine authority, 
does not satisfy the heart hungering for righteous- 
ness. A penitent soul already has the general be- 
lief; but it is not sufficient for Christian life. A 
conversion of the soul, involving specific, vital 
trust, is necessary in the very nature of the Chris- 
tian life. 

Though it were true that God has already for- 
given the sins of every sinner on earth, trust alone 
could realize it and make the persuasion in the mind 
of Divine forgiveness the beginning of the real 
Christian life. Every life would continue to be 
godless without this specific trust. Eternity would 



176 THE MASTER SOWER. 

not be sufficient for the growth of holiness with- 
out this trust. Communion with the Divine Spirit 
would be impossible without this trust. We med- 
dle not here with what passes in the Infinite Mind; 
yet we believe that the Word of God encourages a 
penitent soul unfalteringly to trust God for the for- 
giveness of sins. The penitent is encouraged to be- 
lieve his sins forgiven, and in the course of a re- 
ligious life to act as one so believing, and to have 
the joy and the peace of trust. 

The clear, full assurance of faith, the sweet, pure 
persuasion in the soul of Divine forgiveness of sin, 
with will invigorated to do God's will, joined with 
renovated affections, the chief of which is the love 
of God " shed abroad in the heart by the Holy 
Spirit," is Christian conversion. 

What is the significance of the life and the death 
of Jesus Christ regarded in one view? We plainly 
see the fallen, degraded, and helpless condition of 
humanity. There is evidently something seriously 
wrong in the very center of the life of the human 
race. Evil has entered the world, and has a firm 
grasp on the human heart. Behold in Christ an 
illustration of the exaltation of humanity! How 
his wonderful life pleads for the race ! What en- 
couragement to us in his victory ! How his virtue 
speaks to us and for us ! His life is an intercession 
for us, an intercession that is not hushed in his 
death. His life pleads for a possibility of life in us. 
The significance of his life of purity, of perfect obe- 



HONEST CONVERSION. 177 

dience to divine law, of complete resignation to the 
divine will, of oneness of will and purpose with 
the Father, of unruffled communion with the Father, 
is more than example; it is intercession. 

The intercession of the life of the Son of God 
on earth was indeed crowned with the intercession 
of his death. The presence of his crucified hu- 
manity in heaven continues the intercession of his 
suffering but perfected life on earth. We say that 
the very nature of things in earth and in heaven 
declare the life of Jesus to have been intercessory. 
The holiness of God and the sinfulness of men ; the 
conflict of divine mercy and divine justice; the 
representative character of the first man, and the 
representative character of Jesus Christ; the fall of 
Adam and the triumph of Christ, alike involving 
principles touching humanity, — all indicate our in- 
terest in the life of Jesus interceding for us. The 
life of Jesus was of the nature of sacrifice for hu- 
manity. He poured out his life unto death for us. 
He made himself, for a time, of no reputation for us. 
He made his soul an offering for us. He was 
wounded from the beginning to the end of his 
ministry for our transgressions. 

Jesus is the Lamb of God that takes away the 
sin of the world — a lamb in his innocence and in 
his sacrifice. He is the High Priest of sinning hu- 
manity, who offered himself on the cross on Calvary. 
He ever liveth to make intercession for us. May 

not the divine justice and mercy and love be studied 

12 



178 THE MASTER SOWER. 

throughout the intelligent universe filled with the 
history of Christ, in the light of the life consum- 
mated in the one divine tragedy on Calvary? 

Grace of God comes to a penitent, believing soul 
because of the victory of the Son of God. There is 
encouragement to pray in the name of Christ. Our 
Savior once said to his immediate disciples, just be- 
fore the significance of his death was unfolded : 
"Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name; ask 
that ye may receive, and that your joy may be full." 
There is relief for a sin-troubled heart asking for- 
giveness for the sake of Him " who loved us and 
gave himself for us." 

The ground of the trust of a soul hungering and 
thirsting for righteousness is in what Jesus, the Son 
of God, is, and in what he has done. Having the 
Christ-manifestation of God, a token of atonement, 
a pledge of divine grace, a trusting heart realizes 
a peaceful or a joyous persuasion of Divine forgive- 
ness. Is not this persuasion of forgiveness the 
"witness" of the Holy Spirit in the trusting soul? 
The gospel throughout indicates that God answers 
trust. The Divine Spirit's answer to trust changes 
the heart of a man. 

The manifested love of God, borne as upon the 
wings of the Holy Spirit flying like a gentle dove to 
the heart, is God's response to our trust. There are 
two representative passages of the Word of God 
which are remarkably correlative. They are : " Be- 
ing justified by faith, we have peace with God," 



HONEST CONVERSION. 1 79 

and "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts 
by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us." And 
then, as if blending the two, we have: " The Spirit 
itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the 
children of God." The passages quoted indicate 
currents of divine thought concerning those who 
with the heart believe unto righteousness. 

A regenerating love accompanies the trust that 
apprehends the forgiveness of sin. It is love in the 
holy presence of the Spirit of God. It is a heavenly 
benediction to the trusting soul. What a spiritual 
revelation, what an opening into a new world, what 
a new and noble impulse of life, what an uplifting 
of the soul above its unrest, is the first marked love 
of God with a Christ-like love of mankind! AVon- 
drous kindling in the soul of a tire of love! 

In the new birth of the soul, characterized by 
love divine, there is a baptism of the Spirit of God 
inducting or initiating the believing man into the 
kingdom of the Son of God. The scepter of this 
kingdom is a scepter of righteousness ; and the heart 
that reigns is a God-like heart. 

How could Jesus Christ consistently deliver to 
the sinning heart of humanity any other than the 
message, "Ye must be born again ?" What soul, 
longing to explore the length, breadth, height, and 
depth of divine love, will angrily dispute about the 
interpretation of the message? There is, it is true, 
a mystery in the message, but it is no less nor more 
than the mvstery of love. AYe did not reason our- 



180 THE MASTER SOWER. 

selves into this natural world. We can not reason 
ourselves into the spiritual world of Christ. We 
must be born into it — we must breathe its spirit. 
Christ says, "Ye must;" but it is not the ex- 
pression of arbitrary authority, but of eternal 
fitness. 

The presence of the Christian religion among 
men on earth creates a hungering in the hearts of 
men. This is right. When a man once hungers 
for righteousness he feels that he ought to hun- 
ger — that he owes it to the capacity of his spirit to 
hunger. It is a restlessness that is of God. It 
causes him to look for an era in the experience of 
his soul. Jesus speaks truly when he says, " Blessed 
are they that hunger and thirst after righteous- 
ness," for such have come within the sphere of 
God's richest grace. Earth, air, sea, and sky will 
yield grace to intellect; chaste art, which has the 
favor of God, will yield grace to taste; but the 
Spirit of God will yield grace to faith, springing 
from the soul wounded by sin and hungering for 
the righteousness proclaimed by the Son of God. 
Blessed hunger, that will be satisfied with nothing 
less than God — that is insatiate until the man can 
truly say, " God is the portion of my soul !" 

How many there are in condition to have in 
their life a marked beginning of the love of God, 
if they hunger, and if they will! They can have a 
conversion of soul. Even though there has been 
no marked hatred in their hearts; though vice has 



HONEST CONVERSION. 181 

not palpably enslaved them, yet a love of God 
can be so marked in their consciousness — can be so 
accentuated by the Spirit of the living, loving 
God — a new life can so clearly begin, that all life 
within them will appear just to begin, and all 
things put on new significance. 

The new love transcends all other loves, glori- 
fies all of them that are worthy, baptizes them with 
a new spirit, directs them heavenward. It is a 
love that sanctifies the spirit, and strengthens its 
capacity for loving whatever is essentially good. 
You shall know this love by its heavenly purity, 
its sweetness, and its Christ-likeness. You shall 
know it by its heavenly beauty. This love lifts 
you higher into life, and interprets for you the 
most glorious significance of life. It makes every 
other love, which it does not in its very nature re- 
buke, a greater joy for the soul. 

The Holy, Divine Spirit inspires the gospel of 
Christ, and heartily and honestly to accept this 
gospel involves a conversion to this Spirit. The 
same Spirit that inspires the gospel must take pos- 
session of the soul that accepts Christ, and must 
shine forth again in some phenomena of Christian 
life. In whatever soul of man sinfulness has run 
a marked course, Christian life must begin, if ever, 
with the love of God inspired by the Holy Spirit, 
which inspiration may as well be termed conversion 
of the soul. 



XXIV. 

RIPE FRUIT. 

a T)UT that on the good ground are they which, 
±J in an honest and good heart, having heard 
the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with 
patience." 

There are mature Christians on earth in whose 
lives the Spirit of the gospel of Christ is victorious. 
It is true that some human infirmities cling to 
these lives. It is equally true that these lives man- 
ifest to the world a high but not ostentatious de- 
gree of communion with that Divine Spirit which 
has given to the world the religion of Jesus. These 
are lives that exhibit ripe fruit of the seed of Christ- 
truth sown in earthly soil. 

There are traits of Christian character — such as 
" joyousness, peacefulness, patience, gentleness, good- 
ness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance, and love" — 
which are the " fruit of the Spirit," the illustration 
of the genius of Christianity, and the promise of a 
pure and better life for humanity. Let us exam- 
ine these characteristics, one by one, with some de- 
gree of honest sympathy. Let us not shrink from 
them because of our honest self-reproaches. Their 
spiritual beauty will be a benediction to our souls. 
They illustrate the undying spirit of the gospel of 
182 



RIPE FRUIT. 183 

Christ. They can not justly encounter the opposi- 
tion of " natural science," for they are spiritual 
qualities. They survive any and all critical recon- 
structions of the gospel. They are not essentially 
in distracting opposition to the moving spirit of 
the times in which men live, for the real Christ- 
spirit is in divine sympathy with all times. These 
characteristics indicate the divine essence of Chris- 
tianity, which the deep heart of humanity, once pos- 
sessing, is reluctant to lose. 

There is a joyousness which the real Christian 
experiences by right of his trust in Christ. This 
is in vivid contrast with the spurious joyousness 
with which we have seen the gospel misappre- 
hended. It is a joyousness higher than that which 
the spirit derives from earthly sources — higher be- 
cause of a diviner faith in a higher world of spirit- 
ual beauty, suggested by the Christian idea of holi- 
ness — spiritual beauty which is promise of joy 
forever. This joyousness is like the flow of a 
divine life, rising above the joy inspired by the 
things that are seen, heard, handled, here below. 
It is the joyous rising of the soul, disburdened of 
its weight of sin — even though not every infirmity 
is laid aside — into an atmosphere of Christian trust- 
fulness and hopefulness, to view earth with eye of 
faith in Him who divinely talks of heaven, and 
brings glad tidings from the bosom of the Father. 

We are glad to see how Jesus is making sweet 



184 THE MASTER SOWER. 

the deep waters of bitterness, and stirring a deeper 
joyousness in hearts dissatisfied with fruit of joy 
plucked from trees of earthly planting. The Lord 
Jesus Christ leads wandering hearts back to the tree 
of life planted in the midst of the paradise of God. 
He turns these wandering hearts back to holy 
thoughts of immortality ; and their gladness, like a 
healing stream, flows heavenward. 

The Christian idea of heaven, associated with sal- 
vation, is joy-inspiring. Jesus, with his breathings 
of heaven, stirs within a soul a just hope of heaven; 
and the soul rejoices in hope with a joyousness 
that transmutes earth into a preparatory heaven, 
gives new significance to symbols of God in earth 
and sea and sky, retouches with a diviner beauty all 
things whose superficial beauty it does not dissolve, 
and responds to the beauty of Christian holiness — a 
joy forever. 

There is a peacefulness of the Christian mind 
which is as the reflection of the religious tranquillity 
of the mind of Jesus, the Son of God : " Peace I 
leave with you ; my peace I give unto you ; not as the 
world giveth, give I unto you." Do not such words 
flow as with the soft melody of peacefulness from 
tranquil depths of the soul of Jesus? They are as 
the gentlest benediction of the peace of Jesus, veri- 
fying the song of angels in the sky, " On earth 
peace, good-will toward men." 

When Jesus says, " Think not that I am come 



RIPE FRUIT. 185 

to send peace on earth," be does not contradict 
himself; for the benediction of his peace is for hearts 
that accept him, and that enter into his kingdom of 
righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. 
He does not give that peace which is as the " base- 
less fabric of a dream;" it is not for such a one as 
Jesus to inject peace into the unwilling, unbelieving 
souls of men, after the manner of an opiate — to lull 
the conscience, without saving the soul from sin. 

How peaceful the soul divinely poised with the 
sincerely accepted principles of the religion of Jesus! 
The guilty conscience is soothed as by a gentle, per- 
suasive voice of divine forgiveness and compassion. 
Fierce passions are hushed as by the voice of 
Him whom howling tempest and foaming waves 
obeyed. Through the darkness of earth's night of 
sin the anxious heart discerns the Son of God. 
The soul, alarmed by sin, recognizes, walking the 
earth, the Prince of Peace, who, with the divine 
motion of his hand, drives away the fears that 
trouble the soul. 

There is a patience that befits the followers of the 
Lord Christ, while sometimes walking on thorns and 
feeling the sting of earthly evils. " In the world 
ye shall have tribulation," is a memorable saying of 
our Savior, indicating that his sincere followers are 
to be distinguished rather by the bearing of their 
souls in the midst of the evils of this life than by 
any lot of more than ordinary circumstances of 



186 THE MASTER SOWER. 

temporal felicity. The hope of " deliverance from 
this present evil world " is the anchor of the genu- 
ine Christian's soul. The " patience of hope " ac- 
companies the " work of faith " and the " labor of 
love."- There is the calmness of a stoicism that calls 
evil good, that laughs in the pride of strength at 
pain, that disdainfully looks upon susceptibility to 
suffering as vulgarity, and that prates of resignation 
to blind fate. Such is not the " patience of hope" 
in Christ. 

There is a patience of the soul sustained by faith 
in the revelations of the gospel of Christ. There is 
a patience that is wedded to the Christian hope of 
heavenly life. There is a patience which stands by 
conscience, while conscience distinguishes good and 
evil. There is a patience that recognizes a personal 
God who has assigned the human soul a discipline of 
earthly life preliminary to the life of heaven. This 
patience is not the imperturbability of stolidity of 
soul ; it is the calmness under provocation, under 
disappointment, under the unrest of affliction, of a 
soul susceptible to suffering, and disciplined by the 
habit of faith in the Lord Christ. 

The Spirit of Christ is the sanctifier of every ele- 
ment of real gentleness in the conduct of human 
life. If there be rude and boorish followers of 
Christ, it is not because the Spirit of Christ is hos- 
tile to the amenities of cultured society. The Spirit 
of God descending like a clove upon the Son of God 



RIPE FRUIT. 187 

is a hint of Heaven's approbation of all that is dove- 
like in the character of men. Heaven has uttered 
no anathema against genuine refinement of manners. 
Whatever culture may do toward producing the gen- 
tleman — or gentlewoman, if you please — who is at 
the same time a Christian, is not beyond the scope 
of the rightly interpreted spirit of the gospel. It 
should not be forgotten that Christianity is for the 
education of the heart, and that the essentially 
Christian heart may be as a diamond in its rough 
state, or as a diamond in the richest setting that art 
can produce. There is a rudeness and harshness of 
character and of conduct that, is not to be charged 
to the Christian religion, but to the ignorance that 
fails to understand the dignity and sweetness of 
character to be found in the religion, and that 
should properly adorn the Christian profession. 
The gentleness that becomes more expressive, more 
apt, by culture, is not to be regarded as foreign to 
the kingdom of Christ. 

How shall we designate the Christian character 
of goodness f What opposition to evil, what like- 
ness to God, what divine benevolence, what effort 
for the happiness of fellow-men, what fitness for 
the end proposed by Christ, is indicated by this 
one, all-embracing term, goodness — God-ness? 

When God pronounced man "very good/' there 
was no evil in the world. All was order, after 
God's appointment. But the earth is not now a 



188 THE MASTER SOWER. 

" garden of Eden." By some means earth has 
been sown with evils. Not everything is good. It 
can not be denied that there are men on earth pos- 
itively bad. It. is plain that there are other men, 
comparatively good, who are environed with evil, 
yet who, with a Christ-like spirit, oppose evil. 
These good men are not exempt from suffering. 
They are involved in a fall of man — a fall which 
involves suffering. They are not freed from temp- 
tation, for they are on a moral probation which 
involves temptation. Nevertheless they are char- 
acterized by their opposition to evil — as evil is 
characterized in the gospel; hence their character 
of goodness is the essentially Christian character, 
differing from that assumed character of goodness 
which, independently of the Christ-truth and the 
Christ-spirit, attempts to reconstruct social order 
as if no Christ had divinely appeared to men in 
time. 

Christian opposition to evil is tempered with 
that love which "thinketh no evil," and which is 
beautifully illustrated by the outgoing of the heart 
of Jesus for the good of mankind. It is opposi- 
tion to evil; yet at the same time it is allied with 
" whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are 
honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever 
things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, 
whatsoever things are of good report." It is, in 
brief, the protest of every Christ-like virtue against 
the mischief of its opposite — the protest inherent in 



RIPE FRUIT. 189 

the life which illustrates Christian virtue. The pa- 
tience, the gentleness, the meekness, the temperance, 
and the love, inculcated by the gospel, are evidently 
designed to preserve from unnecessary offensiveness 
the Christian character of goodness in its phase of 
necessary opposition to evil. 

To abstain from evil, to decline to participate 
in evil, to make less the sum of human sinfulness 
by withdrawing the consent of one's heart to sin, 
to draw back habitually from the recognized ap- 
pearance of evil, — surely all this belongs to the 
Christian character of goodness. There is much of 
evil that is under the control of a right will. There 
is, it is true, a mystery of suffering on earth; there 
is inevitable suffering, — nevertheless the good man 
draws back from evil whenever evil appears in the 
palpable form of sin. 

The good man continually increases the sum of 
human happiness within the sphere of influence of 
his character and effort. Happy himself in the 
consciousness of rectitude, he aims to promote the 
happiness of others in so far as their character will 
admit of happiness. There is in his heart no evil 
intention to harm any creature. Justice is en- 
shrined in his soul. No right of another is too 
insignificant to be regarded as sacred; no creature 
so debased as to be supposed to have no rights 
that a Christian man is bound to respect. The 
love of exact justice exalts and ennobles him. 
The practice of justice in all the ordinary as well 



190 THE MASTER SOWER. 

as extraordinary affairs of life can fail in its object 
of contributing to the peace and happiness and 
order of society only as vice foils the noble aim of 
justice among men and blunts the soul's recogni- 
tion and appreciation of essential goodness; and 
even when vice interferes with the good man's in- 
tention, and a sense of injury stings his heart, 
mercy lingers in his breast. He is reminded of 
God's long forbearance. He despises not the riches 
of God's goodness and forbearance and long-suffer- 
ing, knowing that the goodness of God has led him 
to repentance, and that while he repented not it 
was of God's mercy that he was not consumed. 
Benevolence continually enlarges the good man's 
heart, as if God were living in him. He repeats 
to the hearts of his fellow-men Heaven's proclama- 
tion, " Good-will toward men." He illustrates this 
good-will in deeds of love, mercy, and kindness; 
in sacrifices for the sake of peace; and in the con- 
tributions of his heart, his brain, his hands, to the 
welfare of men. 

That faith in God which is represented in the 
gospel as inspired and assisted by the Spirit of 
God, and results in a spirit of obedience to the 
Divine will, is the basis of a faithfulness among 
men which we believe to be most consonant with 
the will of God concerning human society. 

The God of the Bible is He who is represented 
as keeping his covenant forever. He is the " faith- 



RIPE FRUIT. 191 

ful Creator" to whom men are urged to commit 
the keeping of their sonls in well-doing. It is a 
precious idea of God we have in his declaration, 
"I will establish my covenant between thee and me, 
and thy seed after thee in their generations, to be an 
everlasting covenant, to be a God to thee and to thy 
seed after thee." The divine character of faithful- 
ness, in all the various views we have of it in the 
Scriptures, gives us an idea of that faithfulness 
which should characterize men in all their just re- 
lations in society on earth. God's promises do not 
fail in vitality nor swerve in process of verification 
through what seems to the minds of men the slow 
revolution of a thousand years ; the stamp of the 
resources of eternity is in the promises of our God. 
It is not faithfulness toward God alone, the strict 
observance of religious rites, the use of means of 
divine grace, but also faithfulness toward men, that 
completes the character of a faithful Christian — a 
faithful man. The man who seals his promise with 
his honor, and whose honor is his passport, often, 
even among dishonorable men; the man who makes 
a sacrifice to make good his word or to keep his 
promise ; the man who is true to the obligation that 
friendship creates ; the man who does not betray 
the confidence he has invited and accepted ; the 
man who is trustworthy, even to the extent that 
his delicate sense of honor forbids his fracturing the 
slightest seal which guards a cherished secret, though 
he may know that it would yield him a great ad- 



192 THE MASTER SOWER. 

vantage, — this man exemplifies the faithfulness 
that is humanly divine. 

Jesus, who, under provocation and injury, ex- 
hibited no malicious anger and no spirit of revenge, 
while, at the same time, he was a spirited reformer 
and by no means lacking in moral heroism and 
daring, exemplified that admirable quality of soul 
which we call meekness. Happy the man who 
rules his own spirit. His soul does not fret to in- 
jure any living creature. Malice and wrath do not 
leap in flames from his heart. His tongue is net 
set on fire of hell. If just indignation arouses his 
soul, it does not degenerate into spitefulness; on the 
contrary, it but fitly asserts the genuine greatness 
and goodness of his character. 

The exact opposite of a revengeful spirit is the 
disposition to return good for evil. It is a dispo- 
sition that must be cultivated — if cultivated suc- 
cessfully — in the spirit of the gospel of Christ. 
Meekness exalts the character of a man. It evinces 
his faith in the ultimate ascendency of good, his 
faith in virtue that shall survive the present dis- 
order of society, his faith in the justness of Divine 
Providence. The reckless disposition to return evil 
for evil tends to perpetuate the disorder of society. 
Christ interposes a check to this disorder by inspir- 
ing in some souls the magnanimity of goodness. 
The gospel indicates the right starting-point for a 
better order — for the better order of society. 



RIPE FRUIT. 193 

The meek Son of God has outrun all philoso- 
phies that have started out to hold mankind in a. 
nobler career of goodness, and have been baffled by 
the inveterate demand of evil for evil. This Son of 
God has searched deeper than men's codes of honor. 
Shall not his divine goodness at least win his ene- 
mies? 

Let ns see Avhat it is that underlies that temper- 
ance which is numbered among the cardinal virtues 
of the Christian character. It is moral self-control. 
Man was not created to be no more than an animal 
forever. He is to rise above the domination of his 
flesh". His animal propensities are to be tempered 
by a Christian spirit. He has a Master above him, 
it is true; but he is also to be a master to himself, 
within himself. What self-control was manifested 
in the case of those persons who at the first were 
converted from "drunkenness" and "revelings" to 
the sobriety of the gospel ! What a transition from 
the debauchery of paganism, even to the crudest 
form of Christian character ! What a decisive ad- 
vance in character was made ! What paganism of 
intemperance yet remains in Christendom ! What 
subjection to uncontrolled appetites! The gospel 
does not relax its denunciation of barbarism in 
low social life nor of barbarism in high social life. 
Christ aims to draw men upward into a sphere of 
self-control. 

The world is to-day witnessing an experiment of 

13 



194 THE MASTER SOWER. 

national self-control, and the Christian's hope of the 
success of the experiment is in that personal self- 
control the animating principle of which is the 
Spirit of Christ. What we call sobriety, as the op- 
posite of the vice of the inebriate, is but one among 
various phases of Christian self-control. 

Observe how the souls of many are intoxicated 
with debasing pleasures, with temporary gain, with 
the breath of popular applause, with the atmosphere 
of high places of worldly honor, with brief author- 
ity, — then " let your moderation be known unto all 
men." Then your zeal shall be calmly tempered; 
your pleasures shall be subordinated to your duties 
to God and men ; your gains shall not fill your soul 
with wants; your ambition shall not make you 
restless. 

To attain unto the maturity of a love like Christ's 
is fully to accept Christ's gospel. Whatever of 
mystery there is in complete Christian character is 
the mystery of love. Love is an experience of the 
soul by which the soul is transformed. The qual- 
ity of the love determines the transformation. 
The real Christian loves God in the character in 
which God is revealed in the gospel of Christ. 
He sees nothing unamiable in God. He contem- 
plates the divine attributes with a sympathy that 
glorifies his life. In the very midst of the awful 
manifestations of omnipotence the servile fear of 
his soul is cast out. His grateful heart recognizes 



RIPE FRUIT. 195 

the divine mercy; responds with joy to the di- 
vine goodness; shrinks not from God, who has 
searched him and knows him altogether; and is 
comforted by the Divine Presence. It is the love 
springing from that heroic trust which was once 
thus expressed : " Though he slay me, yet will I 
trust him/' 

The hearts of men have been wounded and 
soiled by the sin of hatred. Christ is to the world 
a signal of good-will. The most precious interests 
of human society depend upon mutual good-will. 
Kindness must prevail, envy must be effectually 
shamed, selfishness must be banished from the 
heart, before we shall see clearly the glorious de- 
sign of the gospel of Christ. The love — in other 
words, the good-will — of many, illumined by the 
Spirit of Christ, is nevertheless greatly embar- 
rassed by the malevolence that lingers yet in the 
hearts of men. Every man experiences difficulty 
in rendering practical the theory of Christian good- 
will which his mind receives and admires. There 
is all around us the clashing of human infirmities. 
There is constant failure of seeing eye to eye. 
We do not stand as yet on one common plane of 
light. Our thoughts of God and men are not as 
yet in parallel lines. 

Christ, with loftiest spiritual thought for the 
good of mankind, was wounded in the darkness 
that comprehended not his divine love. The ad 
vent of the Son of God was in a certain sense an 



196 THE MASTER SO WEE. 

anachronism; but so it would have been if it had 
been delayed a thousand years. The leaven of his 
love is working in the bosom of humanity. The 
example of his good-will to men becomes more and 
more conspicuous. 

Heavenly seed of Christ-truth sown in earthly 
soil- — gospel of the Son of God — glad-tidings- from 
afar — through what vicissitudes on earth it has 
passed, to fill with light, love, and life souls that 
thirst for God! What a Spirit has inspired this 
gospel ! What a rift in the sin-clouds hanging 
over earth it has made! The hope of spirit-im- 
mortality glows with a new and diviner light. 
This gospel is the light of love, shining from the 
Fatherhood of God upon the brotherhood of men. 
It assigns eternal significance to love. Through 
this gospel of the Son of God a heaven dawns in 
the consciousness of the believing, obedient, aspir- 
ing soul. 

O Truth of God, manifested through Jesus, the 
Messiah, we would forever behold thy fadeless 
glory ! 



THE END, 



